


All By Myself

by Saraste



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Banshee Lydia Martin, Cheating, Derek is sometimes bad at werewolfing, Discussion of Abortion, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Lamia, M/M, Magical consequences of unprotected sex, McCall Pack, Mpreg, Nightmares, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Panic Attacks, Season 3a compliant, Self-Harm, Sheriff Stilinski is the best dad ever, Stiles Has Panic Attacks, Stiles Stilinski single teen father, Stilinski Family Feels, magical mpreg
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-26 19:39:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/969537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>”He cheated on you, Stiles. He cheated on you.” </p><p>Stiles hopes that if he repeats it to himself enough times then it'll make it easier to let go of his hate, of the heartache that has been inside him since he went into the loft, only to find Derek in his bed, naked, entangled with his English teacher, also naked. The heartache which had soaked deep into his body as he'd fled, running down the stairs, on his way to a panic attack. </p><p>Compliant with the finale and the whole run of season 3a, so spoilers ahead!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. His Little Miracle-problem

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was named after a certain 90's ballad. I blame a certain scene in Bridget Jones' Diary, even when that hasn't anything to do with this fic. (Title is subject to change, if I can come up with something better.)
> 
> Also, I know Derek comes off as a real jerk, but... bear with me. 
> 
> A big thank you to my beta, geekyrambles. <3 *hugs*
> 
> UPDATE 1.4.2017: This is not an April fools joke. I am writing more of this. Although I might need to scrap what was supposed to be chapter four, because when I glanced it through today I said to myself "this is actually horrid", which doesn't bode well for any writing. So, I'm basically jumping back to what I had initially planned as chapter four way back when. Hum. Anyway. Just wanted to give an update, as a few people have asked if there'll be more. I'm not giving dates or anything, but a new chapter is coming. Well, okay, I work well with deadlines now as I need to because work, so I... I will have a new chapter by May 1st. Yay, deadlines!

It's Friday. Stiles is home, sprawled over his bed, exhausted and not really impressed with the latest bizarre and unexpected turn his life has taken. It's so late that it's already dark outside and the only source of light in Stiles' room is the lamp on his desk. His window is closed and he's gotten a pad lock for it. Not that it'll keep a determined werewolf out, but it send out a message to anyone who might want to get in. Not that there's a possibility for anyone creeping in through Stiles' window. 

  
  


Because Derek's gone.

  
  


Of course, Derek leaving to put himself back together and leaving behind a heart-broken-Stiles wasn’t enough, because when was it ever. 

  
  


No. 

  
  


Because when was just that Stiles’ life. Not that he cares, he really doesn't, that Derek is gone. He _doesn't._

  
  


“I don't care.” He says into the empty room, to convince himself of how much he doesn't care. He's been doing that a lot in the past two months. 

  
  


But it's not really the truth and Stiles knows it. Denial is just another way to lie to oneself. 

  
  


Because Stiles had cared, even when he often wished that he'd been able to care less, that Derek hadn't gotten under his skin, that he hadn't fallen for him so hard. Yes, Stiles got to have a nice nervous breakdown which he had tried to hide as much as he could. All because Derek left Beacon Hills. Stiles was pretty sure he'd not succeeded with hiding it as well as he could have hoped. There might have been no words of love or even deep-running affection and commitment exchanged between them, apart from a few times when Stiles knew Derek had thought he had been asleep, and even then Stiles hadn't been sure he'd heard him right. Yet Stiles had been sure, convinced that Derek would have mauled anyone who’d dared to encroach on Stiles’, and by proxy Derek’s, personal space. Stiles had seen it happen, and part of him had thought it was only because his big bad Alpha was majorly territorial. 

  
  


Derek saw, well past tense now, had seen, Stiles as _his._ Because he clearly didn’t do that – hadn't done for a while even before he'd left – anymore. Because he’d left. 

  
  


And it had been a nice feeling. That sense of belonging that Stiles hadn’t let himself acknowledge he’s been missing or pining for all the days that Derek has been gone. Because Derek had been gone for longer than he had been away from Beacon Hills, even when Stiles hadn't been able to be entirely distance himself. Of course, there had been Derek, all over him, in him, on him. In his bed, in his room, in his arms but never, or so Stiles had thought, hoped now with a heavy icy weight in his heart marred with an eternal darkness, in his heart. 

  
  


”He cheated on you, Stiles. He cheated on you.” Stiles hopes that if he repeats it to himself enough times then it'll make it easier to let go of his hate, of the heartache that has been inside him since he went into the loft, only to find Derek in his bed, naked, entangled with his English teacher, also naked. The heartache which had soaked deep into his body as he'd fled, running down the stairs, on his way to a panic attack. 

  
  


Stiles is sitting up in his bed, leaning onto the wall behind, clutching a pillow to his midriff, trying very hard not to cry, because what did he have to cry about. He didn’t _need_ Derek to feel whole, even when he felt a part of him ‒ something that had nothing to do with the spell they’d done, because that had damaged him ‒ something had cracked and would never be whole again. It made him feel such a girl, not that girls were fragile, really, he’d been around enough strong women to attest otherwise. But Stiles hated this feeling, this cut-wrenching wrongness which has nothing to do with what he’s found out earlier today, what he’d confirmed, well, as well as it could be, with a somewhat embarrassing trip to the pharmacist and a harrowing half an hour in the bathroom.

  
  


But Stiles really doesn’t want to think about that, doesn’t want to turn and look what lies discarded on his bed side table. So he flops back onto the covers and closes his eyes, hoping and wishing that the world would just disappear for a moment, that everything would stop feeling so harsh, so unreal.

  
  


So, all he can do is close his eyes, hiding in the almost oppressing tightness of his bedroom, and try and not hurt, try and remember that his life was…

_Derek pushed deep inside of him, buried to the hilt and it made Stiles quiver with the need to come mixed with the intense desire that the moment would never end. He’d fallen so hard for Derek that it wasn’t even funny anymore but had never… could never say it. Not when he wasn’t sure Derek would say it back._

  
  


_But it was at moments like this, with Derek’s weight bearing down on him, with him filling Stiles to the brink and keeping him captive with that intense Alpha gaze of his, it was moments like that which made Stiles hope._

  
  


_Hope that there was something more than just fucking, just Derek using him for his basic sexual needs._

  
  


_That it meant something, the way Derek locked eyes with him, stilled when they were close to the brink and just_ looked _down at him, like marveling that he had Stiles, that they had this. Their own special intimacy which no one could take away from them._

  
  


Stiles’ eyes snap open and he curses, tears in his eyes, because why can’t he stop remembering. And he knows that he never will not remember, not now. A hand sneaks on his stomach, flat but with something impossible cocooned inside, his own personal scary-as-fuck miracle. He knows his life will never be the same again. Yet it’s hard to believe, even after all the magic that’s been happening in his life. It’s almost impossible. And still, it’s there, it’s real whether he wants it or not.

  
  


And he can’t decide if he does, because it doesn’t feel real. Shouldn’t feel real. He aches for Derek, stupid broody Derek who left him and cheated on him, to be there and wrap his arms around him, scent him and tell him it’ll be all right. That Derek will look after him, like Stiles is some weak thing. Stiles stares up at the ceiling, blinking. He’s _not_ going to cry anymore.

  
  


Derek has left, barely looking back after the whole debacle, and Stiles just needs to deal. 

  
  


The whole debacle which had had the mouth-souring fact of Derek having been sleeping with the fucking Darach behind Stiles’ back wrapped into all the mix of general horridness. Not that Stiles and Derek had ever been exclusive, and they hadn’t really been getting together while Derek had been seeing the teacher. And when Stiles had found out, he’d called it quits. But that last night, after all Derek had been through, he just _couldn’t_. He’d gone to Derek, knowing he was leaving, hoping to persuade him otherwise.

  
  


But then he’d just woken up alone the next morning, the bed empty and cold beside him, with not even a note from Derek. Just the marks of his gentle nips on Stiles’ pale skin, matched with red aching hickeys on his shoulder, hips and thighs. Well, and a soreness to his behind, but that’s nothing compared to the ache he felt when he knew, when he'd realized that Derek was _gone_.

  
  


So, yeah, maybe Stiles isn’t wishing that he’d see Derek again real soon. 

  
  


Well, he hadn’t been, but then there was the thing, the little thing Derek had left behind when he’d scarpered, along with leaving Stiles’ broken trampled-to-the-ground heart in his wake. It had taken Stiles some time to figure out and when he had, he’d been aghast that Derek hadn’t noticed it on him. That Derek hadn’t _seen_. 

  
  


Had not _known._

  
  


During the long dark hours of the nights that followed, when Stiles was most decidedly not crying into his pillow like a complete and utter girl, Stiles had brewed over the questions in his mind. Had Derek slept around on him if he’d known? If he’d taken the time to properly be around Stiles, to notice the chance in his scent, the small yet significant shift inside his body. Or had he, and this was the option Stiles really, really didn’t want to even consider, known all along but hadn’t cared enough to try and find out if it was really true. Stiles really didn’t think it was that, Derek had lost enough family as it was, there was no way he’d throw even the most ludicrous sounding of possibilities to the wind for a little fuck with some insipid English teacher, no matter that she turned out to be a druid gone bad.

  
  


But would Derek have considered leaving even after all that had happened if he had known was the question which nagged at Stiles' mind now, even when he was still hovering on disbelief himself. And how the hell hadn’t he?

Because someone else _had_ noticed. 

  
  


And it hadn’t even taken them that long a time. Except, maybe, yeah, maybe there hadn’t been anything big enough to notice, the last time Stiles had seen Derek, the last time he’d felt his hands on him, lingering and hesitant. That last time, it hadn’t been sex, it had been intimacy. An damn Stiles that he had let Derek sob in his arms, just for a bit, actually fucking soothing him after all the shit Derek had done, after how Derek had hurt him. You’d think Derek would have picked it up then, with his nose pressed up at Stiles’ neck, making him ticklish as Derek's breath was puffed warm and insistent against his skin, but maybe Derek's werewolf mojo had been thrown out of whack by his not being the Alpha anymore. Stiles didn't know.

  
  


There were too many ‘maybes’ in the equation for Stiles’ liking and he opened his eyes, staring up at the ceiling like it would have an explanation to him. He sighed, so very weary with it all. 

  
  


Sure, it would have been great if they’d noticed it before Derek had gone up and left. It would have been great also, if Stiles had found out before Derek had left. But he’d been living in all sorts of denial over things happening in his life that the reason to his health taking a tumble downhill had been chalked up to his break-up – well if they’d even actually had a proper relationship in the first place, which Stiles now doubted a lot – with Derek.

  
  


If Stiles had known, he wasn’t entirely hundred percent sure if he ever could have been the surrogate sacrifice for his dad. If he'd been willing to risk it, no matter how much he loved his dad.

  
  


But maybe it had been for the best, as his little miracle-problem seemed hard to shift and Stiles didn’t know and didn’t want to think about how he would have managed to choose between his Dad and the baby he didn’t entirely believe he was having even now, not even with the used, positive, pregnancy tests still on his bedroom table along with their instructions leaflets. The blue crosses all too visible in them had seemed to have mocked him, having made him fall to his knees in the bathroom when he’d taken them half an hour ago, which seemed an eternity ago now.

  
  


And just because, that very afternoon, Scott had said something when they’d been at school. 

That it was Scott, sometimes stupid but always unwaveringly loyal Scott, who had noticed it first had made Stiles creep away from the denial he’d buried himself in a little bit. Just a bit. Because he had begun to think that the way his body had been behaving all of November, that there was something it all added up to, even when it was crazy and entirely and utterly impossible, plus, insane. So, today at school, Scott had just leaned over during lunch, casual as you like and _sniffed_ at Stiles, his face a mask of confusion. Stiles had been sure it’d matched his own.

  
  


Not that he hadn’t gotten used to sniffing werewolves, he had. It was his life, anyway. 

  
  


“What’s that smell?” Scott had asked, right to the point as always, saying the first thing that popped into his head. 

  
  


Stiles couldn’t believe that it had been less than six hours ago. 

  
  


Scott’s eyes had been wide in a way Stiles would have found comic if there hadn’t been a heavy weight around his heart, never mind the darkness he often felt like he was drowning in. The noise of the cafeteria around them had seemed to stop, fade away into nothing, as Stiles’ attention had zeroed in on what Scott was saying.

  
  


It hit him even now, when the moment was over. 

  
  


Part of him had been sure that Scott wouldn’t, couldn't, have any idea what was wrong with him. Part of him had wanted to not notice the really odd way Scott had been looking at him, eyes darting up from his face to his midriff. Stiles had tried to make himself believe that he didn’t want to know. Yeah, like that was a possibility with how his life was. He didn’t even want to know now that he knew.

  
  


He’d pushed his lunch around on his plate, his stomach having become queasy at the thought and sight of food, the low nausea still present in the back of his mind after he’d been sick in the morning before school, barely keeping his breakfast down. Stiles had known, the moment Scott had opened his mouth, that he should have stayed at home. It would have been better to avoid Scott’s questions. 

Not that his staying home would have hindered Scott, Stiles scoffed in the darkness of his bedroom, flopping onto his side and hugging a pillow to his stomach. No, Scott would have just come and barged into his home, well, he had a key, but, principle! 

  
  


The resident Alpha of Beacon Hills caring for his pack. Stiles still found it weird to think about Scott as the Alpha. It was right but also sometimes felt wrong. Not that Stiles hadn’t often thought that Derek had been making a rather crappy job of the whole alpha business when he had been the only Alpha in Beacon Hills. But now Scott was it and Stiles belonged to his pack, not the Hale pack.

  
  


At one time, Stiles would have given anything to belong to Derek’s pack. Of belonging to Derek’s heart. 

  
  


“Fuck you, Derek,” he whispered into the darkness, repeating the sentiment he had had at least a dozen times a day since Derek had left. “Fuck. You.”

  
  


He hated Derek so much but there was also… yeah, there was also his broken heart. Which was all Derek’s fault. But maybe he could have been more open, himself. If that would have made any difference! Well, maybe it could have.

  
  


That he was sometimes drowning in the darkness in his heart didn’t help matters. Like now, when he was laying in his bed, alone and just couldn’t stop himself from going over his conversation with Scott. Well, the parts that had had him leave school early, drive to the nearest pharmacy and then home, to confirm what Scott had said.

  
  


The words had been simple enough. Stiles could only thank the small mercy that Scott had leaned close to him, even when Stiles had still felt that Scott was talking way too loud for his liking. 

  
  


“You smell like you’re…” Scott had taken one last sniff and Stiles’ stomach cringed at the memory, “like you’re… pregnant?” 

  
  


Scott’s eyes had been huge and he’d yelled after Stiles when he’d bolted. Who wouldn’t have? It made no sense. Because it was ludicrous. The whole idea was absolutely insane. So he'd ran.

  
  


And yet he knew it was true. 

  
  


He was having Derek fucking Hale’s kid and Derek hadn’t even cared enough to stay for that. Stiles felt like such a girl as he cried himself to sleep. Whispering a name, a plea into the darkness before sleep fully claimed into oblivion and dreams where his life was different, where tragedy had not struck and maybe, just maybe, he'd have her to help him through this. 

  
  


”Mom...”

  
  


* * * *

  
  


The next morning, his phone buzzed him awake as he got a text message. Stiles grunted but fished the phone out anyway, feeling groggy and hungry and a little bit nauseous. He flicked the screen to life and looked at the message.

  
  


It was from Scott, who else. 

  
  


_Dude, you okay?_

  
  


Stiles ran a hand over his face, flopping properly onto his back. He stared at the phone and flicked to missed calls. 20. All from Scott. Figures. Stiles was only confused why he hadn’t woken up to them, as his phone hadn’t been on mute. He was just grateful that Scott hadn't blabbed, because then there would have been calls from Isaac, Lydia and maybe even Allison. 

  
  


Five minutes later he decided that trying to come one with his mattress really wasn't a valid life choice and was not going to work until he’d had breakfast. So he went to brush his teeth and then headed downstairs. His dad was home, which Stiles couldn’t decide wasn’t a good or bad thing. He wasn’t going to tell his dad, hell, he barely even believed it himself.

  
  


Not even when he’d seen all the positive pregnancy tests still on his bed side table right after he'd stopped fiddling with his phone. He’d thrown them into the trash, unable to look at them any longer. He was sure they were all faulty. Because it couldn’t be true. He was so happy it was a Saturday. He’d have to go buy some new ones. Ok, so maybe he needed to go by Deaton’s.

  
  


“Mornin’ dad,” he said tiredly when he finally reached the kitchen and it’s safe haven of caffeine scented goodness. 

  
  


“Morning Stiles,” his dad waved to him from behind his Beacon Hills Courier. 

  
  


Stiles plopped down onto the table with a mug of coffee and some cereal. He tuck in somewhat halfheartedly. He wasn’t really hungry to tell the truth. And his stomach still rumbled a little bit ominously, he couldn't tell if it was because of nerves or... it couldn't be _that_. Just couldn't. But he knew he needed to eat. Because he needed to be healthy.

  
  


Suddenly, realization crashed over Stiles as he was quickly spooning the soggy cereal into his mouth. He hadn’t even considered just… ending it. His spoon clattered to the bowl full of milk and cereal, making some of it splash onto the table. He could, couldn’t he? He could just… maybe go to Deaton’s and ask some herb or something. This, the baby, didn’t have to be his future. 

  
  


“Stiles? Are you ok?” his dad asked, and Stiles’ eyes snapped up from his half-eaten bowl. 

  
  


His dad looked worried, that familiar crease evident on his forehead. And Stiles knew that he had to tell his dad. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t lie anymore. Now that his dad knew about the werewolves and all that shit there was no reason for it. it had always left a bitter taste in Stiles’ mouth. 

  
  


But how on earth did you tell your dad that you were pregnant when men couldn’t even get pregnant in the first place? Stiles wondered idly if his dad would have him committed.

  
  


How did you tell that you’d had unprotected sex with an older man in the first place, which was why he was knocked up. Stiles supposed there was some magic thrown into the mix but he was sure that plain old biology had had its role in the proceedings, too, well in a very messed up and illogical way. Because he hadn't drunk any suspicious potions so this had to be a insert a into b and squirt c type of situation. 

  
  


As the silence stretched Stiles decided to go for it, throw caution to the wind and just say it. He really hopes his dad will believe it the first time around, not like he didn’t… but Stiles isn’t thinking about that anymore. Water under the bridge. 

  
  


“Dad…” Stiles begins, unsure how to continue. How is this his life. But he looks at his dad, waiting, ready to offer support when and if he needs it. And Stiles knows that he does, he can’t do this alone. Derek’s not coming back. Not for him. _Them._ His dad is all he’s got. Well, and maybe the pack but he doesn’t want to think about it too hard. Also, he’s not sure how Scott and Isaac constitute a pack anyway just between the two of them. (Stiles absolutely refuses to give Peter, the creepy creeper, a moment's thought.)

  
  


“Son, you once told me werewolves are real,” his dad swallows and looks ashamed, “and I didn’t believe you and look where that got me. I promise I’ll believe anything you say.”

  
  


“Dad,” Stiles swallows and tries to keep his cereal down, suddenly very queasy, “dad… I’m pregnant. I don’t even know how. Just, there’s a whole lot of insane supernatural stuff happening and I just have no idea how the hell this happened but Scott smelt it on me yesterday and then I did all these pregnancy tests and they’re all positive and I’m going to be a teenage single dad and I don’t even know how and I really need support pleasedon’tyellatmeandcallmecrazyand havemecommitted!” 

  
  


Stiles gulps in mouthfuls of air, exhausted, and looks at the myriad of expressions fighting for prominence on his dad’s face.

  
  


“So… you’re gay?” 

  
  


Stiles lets out the breath he wasn’t even aware he was holding in. He laughs nervously and buries his face in his hands. The laughter bubbling out of him is quickly nearing hysteria, stealing what breath he has managed to exhale yet he manages to get the words out.

  
  


“That’s what you got out of that?” He knows his sound is breaking but can’t bring himself to care, not much anyway. 

  
  


A hand settles on his shoulder and when he doesn’t flinch, the other settles on the other shoulder and his dad just gently massages the knotted tense muscles there. Stiles didn't even hear him get up from his chair.

  
  


“Well, had to say something to break out the tension,” his dad tells him. “Also, that seems more plausible…”

  
  


When Stiles tenses at those words, his breath hitching in a cue to the beginnings of a panic attack, his dad just goes on. 

  
  


“I believe you, Stiles! I mean, it’s not every day that a dad hears his teenage _son_ tell him he’s pregnant. Oh my god I’m going to be a grandparent!”

  
  


Stiles shakes, overcome with emotion, with the love he has for his dad. At least he won’t be completely alone in this. He’s still breathing all too quick, in short panicked gasps and his dad doesn’t squander any time in flipping his chair around and hugging him. Stiles’ knees hit the floor a little painfully as he falls from the chair into his dad's bear hug but he doesn’t care, is only half aware of it. 

  
  


His dad soothes him through the attack, patting his back, telling him to just breathe over and over again, calming Stiles, making him feel cherished. Cared for. Family. Stiles thinks his dad is the best ever and he can only hope to be as good when… and then he sort of panics again. 

  
  


“Oh my god, I’m gonna be a dad and I’ll suck at it!” the words are muffled into where Stiles has buried his head against his dad’s shoulder. His dad laughs, a joyful laugh, not a mocking one, Stiles can tell the difference from across the room.

  
  


“You’ll be fine, I just know it. You’re Stiles.” His dad does sound convinced, which makes Stiles feel a little better about it all. 

  
  


But then his brain screeches back into functionality again.

  
  


“In what universe is me being me making me a good dad? Shouldn’tthat make m make me the worst dad ever?” he asks his dad. 

  
  


“Stiles,” is all his dad says, half amused half exasperated. 

  
  


Stiles laughs.

  
  


* * * *

  
  


After his dad has calmed him down properly and he’s managed to get something in to fill his growling stomach, they decide to head to Deaton’s, because Stiles needs to confirm this. There is no way he will agree to go to a regular doctor.

  
  


Although…

  
  


Stiles is sitting in his dad's cruiser, his dad in the driver's seat, keys in the ignition and ready to drive, when Stiles frowns on his face. “Maybe we could go and ask Scott’s mom?” he throws the idea around.

  
  


“Sure, if that's what you wanna do,” is all his dad has to say.

  
  


Stiles realizes he still hasn’t replied to Scott’s message or his calls. Stiles flips his phone out from his pocket, unlocks it and scrolls down to Scott’s name, pressing ‘call’. 

  
  


Scott answers after the first ring. “Stiles, fuck, man, I’ve been so worried!” 

  
  


Stiles sighs. “I know. Just… is your mom working today?” He asks, casting a sidelong glance towards his dad who just smiles and gives him a thumbs up.

  
  


“Yeah, why?” Scott asks back.

  
  


“You think she’d…” Stiles has to bite his lips because the next few words just seem so off even after his and his dad's earlier, and shouldn’t ever have had to come out of his mouth in the first place. Stiles closes his eyes and swallows and a memory assaults him. _Derek’s pushing into him, deep and insistent. He looks down, eyes red, panting and grinds out Stiles’ name in a choked growl as he comes. Stiles doesn’t like the sticky feeling inside his ass that much._ Stiles' eyes shoot open and he shakes his head to get rid of the fleck of memory. Damn Derek. “Well, I need some blood work done, think I’m too early for the other stuff. I think.” He can feel his cheeks redden as he blushes.

  
  


His dad, bless him, is looking out the window, giving Stiles his moment to freak out.

  
  


“Oh,” is all Scott says. “Yeah, I think she can work that out. Lemme call her first? Call you back!” 

  
  


Scott disconnects before Stiles has a chance to say anything. “Scott’s calling his mom,” he tells his dad. 

  
  


“That’s good,” his dad tells him, patting his shoulder again, “she’ll be discreet.”

  
  


“Should we get going or wait until Scott calls back?” Stiles asks his dad, a little fidgety now that their initial plan has been scrapped and replaced. He never was one to wait patiently. 

  
  


“I’d say wait, because maybe Melissa can’t fit us in and then we’d be driving over there for nothing.”

  
  


Stiles decides to say nothing about the fact that his dad is suddenly on first name terms with Scott’s mom. Or the way his dad says Scott’s mom’s name. His dad deserves to be happy.

  
  


Thankfully, Scott calls after they’ve waited for only five minutes. “She can do the tests, just sign in when you get there.”

  
  


“Thanks, dude.”

  
  


* * * *

  
  


“You are pregnant,” Melissa McCall informs Stiles a few hours later. She’s pulled some strings and rushed his blood tests through.

  
  


Stiles sits still, eyes wide and just stares at her. His dad’s hand is on his shoulder, a comforting weight, Scott is standing on his other side, doing the same thing with his own hand. Because there had been no shaking off of Scott once he’d appeared in the hospital. 

  
  


Stiles had known to expect it being positive, yet it’s… kind of a shock. 

  
  


“Pregnant,” he says, because he can’t stop talking, when can he ever? “So the tests weren’t faulty? I’m gonna be a teenage single dad! OH MY GOD!”

  
  


“Stiles, calm down, we can handle this.” His dad, comforting and a voice of ill advised over-optimistic-reason. 

  
  


“Yeah buddy, it’ll be fine!” Of course Scott needs to be overly, almost naïvely, optimistic about it all. Not even fazed that his best friend is pregnant. Even when his best friend is male and it’s biologically impossible.

  
  


Melissa McCall is on Stiles’ line of vision and now she’s crouching and taking hold of his hand, squeezing it. “Yes. Pregnant.” She looks a lot like she can’t believe it either. “And testing your blood just confirms the other tests. But now I’m a little lost, because this is unlike anything I’ve handled before.” 

  
  


Stiles knows she’s still having trouble making room for the supernatural in her head and while her son being a werewolf is a tangible reality she knows, a gangly teenaged boy being pregnant is another thing entirely. Her disbelief is still present in her voice even as she clutches the test results, ran after an invented name, which state clearly and in boring crisp clinical terms that Stiles is pregnant, never mind his gender.

  
  


“You and me both,” Stiles says in a quiet, lost voice. 

  
  


* * * *

  
  


Stiles doesn’t know who else to tell. Not even being more than five weeks along he won’t have to worry about showing until after Christmas anyway. There’s no consideration for ending it. He can’t do it to his dad, nor hid kid, how hard it’ll make his life. 

  
  


Even after Scott's mom had lectured him on how dangerous it was going to be, and urging him to visit Deaton since Stiles' pregnancy was decidedly magical, there was no way around it, Stiles couldn't bring himself to end it. Or even consider the possibility from all angles. 

  
  


Not even when he thinks, while he and dad drive home and Stiles allows himself to believe in the reality of it all, not even when he just knows the baby will end up looking like Derek. 

  
  


He'd stumped all attempts to talk about the other father the others had made. He still wanted to keep that under wraps, delay that discussion with all it's inevitable tangents on age-of-consent and – this he was sure his dad would say – of suggesting Derek had forced himself on him.

  
  


Because that was not the case, far from it.

  
  


Even though Stiles was still dubious as to what Derek had actually felt towards him – Derek dumping him for their English teacher who turned out to be the Darach and had nearly killed them all and had killed a lot of people, and who might just have magicked Derek into a relationship with herself – he feels kind of sick of even thinking that someone would say that about Derek. That Derek would have had to force him into sex. Because that was as far from the truth as you could get. Stiles had fallen for Derek, hard, and it had been a gradual progress from passing acquaintances to the first time that Derek showing him into a wall had ended with a kiss and bit of a grope. Derek had wanted to take things slow, had wanted to wait – it made Stiles choke now, he really wished they had waited, because then he wouldn't have been dumped like yesterdays' garbage – until Stiles was eighteen. 

  
  


But, being a horny teenager, Stiles had of course just badgered and weaseled his way into Derek's pants, age of consent be damned. Because how could he wait for sex with someone as hot as Derek? He'd seduced Derek without and ounce of regret and had been a fully consenting partner in their sweaty entanglements under the sheets. He didn't even get what all the fuss about a few years was – ok, he did get how some people would take advantage of a teenager and all that, but Derek had been, and it wasn't like Stiles had been fifteen or something – except when someone got taken advantage of. Stiles had consented vigorously, noisily and all over the place. Stiles had, to all intents and purposes seduced Derek and had not qualms about it. He'd been active, he'd not let himself be lured into doing something he didn't want, he was ready to admit that much even after how badly things had ended between the two of them. 

  
  


“It's Derek's, isn't ?”

  
  


Yeah, of course his dad would just _know_. Well, he _is_ the sheriff with amazing skills of detection. And it was not like Stiles had been – even when he totally had been – his sexcapades with Derek. 

  
  


Still, it doesn't make Stiles want to bash his head against the car window any less. Well, at least his dad didn't start foaming at the mouth and go straight for the age of consent rant. Something good. There's no point in denying it, it's like ripping off a band aid, better do it quick than try and stall. 

  
  


“Yeah, it's Derek's.” Stiles stares out the window, sighing. He kinda wishes things were different. Because Derek would _love_ having kids, Stiles just knows. But then the hurt comes back, all the times Stiles saw Derek with her and the jealousy and hurt drown out affection. Derek made his choice. Well, at least Stiles isn't yet in a place to let Derek back into his life. He knows he can't deny Derek his kid forever. 

  
  


And how is he already thinking about this so much when he's not even past the first trimester? Mrs. McCall had given him a quick lecture on the baby's development by trimester and showed a mountain of leaflets his way, promising to loan some baby books later. 

  
  


“And you're... not? Are you?” His dad asks. 

  
  


Stiles can't tell if he's more worried, curious or what, not when he's not looking at his dad. And he can't, not during this conversation. Because if he does, he knows he'll cry. 

  
  


“No, he left me for that nice woman who performed ritualistic sacrifices and almost ended up killing you.” Stiles rushes the words out, sure that if he can be quick, it'll hurt less. Derek had always had his faults but the whole Jennifer/Julia business had been a new low. Stiles isn't ready to forgive, even when he'd give everything for Derek to be there, to support him during this crazy situation in which he's having Derek's baby.

  
  


“Want me to shoot him?” his dad suggests, not entirely serious but not completely kidding either, Stiles is sure. But it makes him look at his dad and attempt a watery smile, anyway. He kinda loves his dad to bits.

  
  


How is this even his life when that makes him smile? 

 


	2. Small Comforts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hi, mom,” he said, straightening up and sitting cross-legged, looking at the stone. He wished that she was still around so that he could talk to her; that she would still be alive and there. He had never before wished it more than he did now. “I really wish you were here because, guess what, you'd be the best grandma ever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'ed by the lovely [geeky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/geeky_ramblings). All subsequent mistakes are my own (even when I added maybe four words after her beta so how bad can it be?)

The next morning, Stiles slipped out of the house after sleeping better than he had the night before. Well, at least he hadn't cried himself to sleep this time, which is saying something.

  
  


He made his way – alone because his dad, who had gotten up for his morning shift, had left before Stiles was up – towards Beacon Hills cemetery. He didn't go that often, because the loss was still too raw, even after years and years, but he always visited on her birthday, mother's day and Christmas, and otherwise at least once a month. 

  
  


Maybe once a month was often but she had been a part of him and Stiles still missed her so much, now maybe more than ever, because he was so fucking confused.

  
  


The path to where she was buried was familiar and Stiles really didn't need to even think as his legs walked him to where he was going all on their own, knowing every turn and forward by heart. Soon, he was sighing and dropping down onto the grass before the simple upright slab of granite. He leaned forward and traced the carved letters of her name with his fingers, feeling lost and empty and sad.

  
  


“Hi, mom,” he said, straightening up and sitting cross-legged, looking at the stone. He wished that she was still around so that he could talk to her; that she would still be alive and there. He had never before wished it more than he did now. “I really wish you were here because, guess what, you'd be the best grandma ever.” 

  
  


Stiles doesn't care that he's crying now, burying his face into his hands as he lets go. Because this is his mom. This is the one person he never should have had to lose so early in his life. She was supposed to be there for this, for all the snarls and pitfalls of his teens. She was supposed to be there, excited over her first grandchild. 

  
  


Even when that still feels seriously unreal, even after Stiles had revisited his breakfast that very morning, hating biology in general, magic in particular, his life too. 

  
  


“And oh my god is that impossible! Like, fuck, I'm a guy. I can't get knocked up! And I'm gonna become a teen-mom --- oh god what is my life, teenage dad, I mean!”

  
  


Stiles runs his hands through his hair, ruffling it as he sighs. “I'm so not ready for this. This is all Derek's fault.” 

  
  


The words come out easy but they leave a bitter aftertaste. For there is a thought in his head, which Stiles wants to deny, that this isn't Derek's fault, for there would be no way that Derek would leave him behind knowing there was a baby. Derek would want him to have as normal a life as he could, running with wolves. Stiles knows this but doesn't want to admit it because blaming Derek is easier, now that he's so alone in this, even when he isn't that, either.

  
  


Stiles wants to pound his fists to the ground but he can't, not here. This is his place of comfort. As he sits there he remembers the days when it became Derek, where Derek's arms were the comfort he needed so often, and when he was Derek's comfort, even after Derek had betrayed him. He wants to deny that he still cares but squishes the thought, forces it into a deep part of his mind. Because he _can't_ Not yet, anyway.

  
  


“I don't even know if this is gonna work. If there will even _be_ a baby. If there is, I can't go to graduation, I think,” Stiles looks down at his hands, clasped over his thighs, his fingers shaking. !But this baby's magic, so maybe it'll be true. I still don't know how it happened, but it has to be magic, because biology don't bend this way.”

  
  


“I miss you, mom.” 

  
  


He sits there for a long time, not saying anything, just wishing – and not for the first time since Scott was bitten – that his life was different, easier. Even when he knows it's futile, that he's best off just trying to make the most of it. He knows. Just feels nice to sometimes indulge in thinking how much easier it would all be. One solution would be taking the route Derek took. Leaving. Convincing his dad to leave Beacon Hills for good. Not that it would ever work. Stiles knows he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he ran. 

  
  


He can't ask his dad to uproot his life. Couldn't uproot his own.

  
  


He's both envious and hateful towards Derek, who he's _not_ thinking about, and his ability to take that easy route. The one where when life gets too hard, when you can't stand it, run, just run. But Stiles knows he isn't that person. He hates that Derek is. 

  
  


Even when Derek's leaving isn't a cowards decision, not really. It's the decision of a man who has suffered all too much, has had death brush near him more times that anyone cares to count. 

  
  


This visit shouldn't be about him thinking Derek but is. It's that which finally make Stiles leave. He gets up, runs his fingers over the curving top of his mom's gravestone, as he always does, and just leaves. The visit didn't make him feel better, as sad as that sounds, but it did settle something in him. Maybe. Stiles isn't sure.

  
  


On his way back to his jeep, he texts Scott.

  
  


_To Scott: So, did you tell anyone?_

  
  


Because that's been a worry. Scott is bad at keeping secrets, bad at not letting stuff slip. Especially around Allison, even when that's not going on so much anymore, because of the whole Isaac thing. Even when there's something going on there between the three of them. Anyway, this is something Stiles would rather keep under wraps, not that he will be able to, he thinks. He's sure that Isaac will smell it on him the next time they see each other. Lydia won't but Stiles is sure that she might even figure it out sooner or later, because she's just that smart. She'll jump to the conclusion even when it sounds insane and not think twice about it. Stiles isn't sure if she'll be supportive or not.

  
  


As Stiles is peeling away from the Beacon Hills Cemetery parking lot his phone beeps and he fishes it from his dash and checks the message.

  
  


_From Scott: NO! Dude! Cut me some slack!_

  
  


It's a small comfort. They'll all know tomorrow, at least Isaac, without Stiles needing to tell them anything. Not a damned thing. About being a guy and pregnant. And becoming a single teenage dad-mom. He quickly types a message back, not caring that driving and texting isn't safe but not caring a damn.

  
  


_To Scott: Thought you'd be telling Isaac, as you're so close..._

  
  


The return text comes before Stiles is home, but he opts to drive and park before looking at the text. 

  
  


_From Scott: Why would I? I promised. So, what are you doing today, can I come over?_

  
  


Stiles thinks about that for a bit. It's only lunchtime and his dad's on shift, so he'd be home alone. He opts for Scott's company rather than being alone with his thoughts. He just hopes that Scott won't pry. He doesn't know what Scott will say, what he'll do if Stiles tells him it's Derek's. Not that Scott hadn't known that he'd been with Derek, Stiles hadn't been trying to hid e the smell, they had just never really talked about it, not really. 

  
  


There were a lot of things regarding Derek that they hadn't talked about and for someone who was trying to not think about Derek, Stiles sure was thinking about him a lot.

  
  


When Stiles comes home, he's distracted, can't settle for doing anything until Scott comes. Before he does, Melissa McCall calls him. Stiles of course has her number on his phone but it still feels odd when he sees the caller ID and it's her.

  
  


“Hi?” he picks up tentatively, as he doesn't really know what she could be calling him about, well the baby of course, but he'd thought they'd covered a lot yesterday and they had already set up a loose time to talk later the coming week.

  
  


When Stiles has gone through another talk with Scott's mom, blushing his way through it, he realizes that Derek is a little less culpable than he thought. Because Stiles hadn't been pregnant before Derek left. No. Derek knocked him up the night before he left, which is just... so typical.

  
  


It makes it harder to not think about Derek. How Stiles has to tell him someday. Because he isn't such a monster as deny his baby it's other dad, even if that is Derek Hale, who had left Stiles, then come crawling back and knocked him up. 

  
  


Stiles knows that Derek would defend the baby tooth and claw, would kill anyone who dared hurt it, would never let anything bad happen to it as long as he lived. Yet, Stiles can't think about letting Derek back in his life, not in the state he's in now. There's been too much upheaval in his life in the past thirty hours or so.

  
  


“A parting gift or something...” he says into the empty room, hand on his flat belly, and it's just that, his baby is Derek's parting gift, one way or another. And there will be no refunds.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“It's Derek's.”

  
  


Stiles says it quickly, the words falling all over each other with the haste they come out – like it would make it hurt less. Even when it doesn't make it less true.

  
  


Scott doesn't seem to be able to say anything. At first, at any rate. But then he's verbal again. Then Stiles is really glad that they have the kitchen table between them. And he's kicking himself, as he really should have known better. 

  
  


“Derek's!” Eyes wide, flashing red, claws slipping out, the whole shocked werewolf routine. Scott's losing control and it makes Stiles flinch, draw back, his chair scraping against the kitchen floor.

  
  


He tries to tell himself that he'd not afraid of Scott, he does, but the _need_ to stay safe overrides everything. Stiles is appalled to notice that his mind's trying to remember if he's got any wolfs bane or mountain ash in the house and if so, how close it is. 

  
  


But he'll try words first, even when his flight response is going haywire, telling him to get as far away from a control-losing werewolf as he can, never mind that it's Scott. “Scott, don't wolf out at me now!”

  
  


Scott takes a few deep breaths, Stiles can see how his eyes are darting low, looking at his mid-riff. Scott shakes his head and when he looks up at Stiles, his panicked guilty eyes are all human colored again. “Sorry...” he mutters, thunking his head against the table and covering it with his hands. “Just got so mad at him, leaving you like this!”

  
  


“Yeah, you and me both,” Stiles says bitterly. He's not really looking at Scott, because if he is, then he knows he might do something completely humiliating. He wants to be wordy, it's his defense, after all, his go to activity. But he can't. Because it's Derek and when it's about him words seem to not be enough, words can't cover the hurt.

  
  


“That bastard cheated on you!” Scott hits the table so hard Stiles cringes at the sound. He looks at Scott and is exhales a breath when he looks his normal self, not that his wolfy face isn't part of him now but, yeah... it's complicated.

  
  


Stiles' heart feels cold, even when he's told himself that he _does not care_. But he's no machine, there's no taking away of the happiness he's felt, the warmth of Derek's affection. “Tell me something I don't know.” _But it might not have been all his fault,_ he wants to continue but can't, won't. It's an out he's not giving Derek yet, he's not letting him off the hook this easy.

  
  


“How could he!”

  
  


Stiles' hands wrap around him and he kind of sinks in on himself, trying to make himself small. “I don't fucking know, do I? I'd rather not talk about it...” And his words hitch and he knows he must exude misery to the nth degree because Scott's suddenly there hugging him and telling him he's sorry for bringing it up. Stiles wants to cry but he won't, because then there would be the ominous puppy dog eyes Scott has honed to perfection and Stiles isn't sure he can stand them. 

  
  


The tears come, anyway, and he sobs them into Scott's shoulder. It's Scott so it's okay. He's his best friend, has seen him cry, has comforted him, has tried to hug the pain away. Now literally trying to hug it off, but there's really no werewolf move for leaching out one's emotional hurt. Stiles feels calmer, regardless. 

  
  


“I'm gonna beat him senseless if he ever comes back,” Scott growls and his hug is suddenly a bit too tight before he loosens his arms around Stiles.

  
  


The words are out before Stiles can even begin to keep them reined in. He's just too raw from crying. “He didn't know. I'm not... it's not been long enough. Cos I'm only... man, don't make me spell it out for you!”

  
  


Scott pushed away from Stiles and his eyes are wide. It looks like he doesn't want to say the words and he doesn't, not all of them anyway. Because it's another thing to realize “You mean he? When he _left_?” 

  
  


Stiles only nods. 

  
  


He lets Derek have that small defense, the bastard. He can't get the memories out of his head, the way Derek had looked at him, the way he had sounded like, that night. But waking up alone in the loft the next morning, the bed cold next to him and no note, no anything... that's something Stiles can't forgive. Derek should have stayed. He should have explained, in excruciating detail, no matter how much he loathed himself, Derek should have told Stiles everything. He had apologized, murmured 'I'm sorry' against Stiles' sweaty skin as he lost himself in him, as Stiles gave in, gave his body even when he had known it was a very bad idea. 

  
  


Look at where it had gotten him, having one of the most awkward conversations he's ever had with his best friend, trying to make the man who had cheated on him, who had knocked him up however accidental, only so Scott wouldn't wolf out and start tearing things apart again. How was this even his life, really?

  
  


“You should call him,” Scott says after a while and Stiles goes stiff in his arms and there's no calming his racing heart. 

  
  


“No,” Stiles says in a brittle cried out voice, his fingers grasping at the fabric of Scott's hoodie. He still wants the hug even when Scott is spewing what he thinks is nonsense but what Stiles knows to be 'not gonna happen any time soon'. There's a difference a mile wide. Worlds apart.

  
  


“Stiles! He has a responsibility in this!” 

  
  


Finally Stiles just pushes Scott off and away. He glares at his best friend. “He _left._ I can't talk about this now. I won't. So unless you wanna go out the door you're gonna zip it for now, capiche?”

  
  


He doesn't want to see Derek, doesn't want to let him back in his life, even when a small part of him is jumping up and down at the mere thought. Derek's hurt him too much. Derek left. Derek chose to leave rather than sort out his problems. Stiles had let him back in, had forgiven him in a small way, let his horny teenage body get the best of him and let Derek have at it without protection, had comforted the man who had ripped his beating heart out of his chest and stomped on for months on end and look where it got him? Even when Stiles knew, deep down, that he wouldn't be able to keep Derek out of the kid's life forever, there was no way he was letting the bastard in this soon. And who knew if there even would be a baby? Magical pregnancies had to have at least as much of a fail rate as normal ones during the first few months. 

  
  


And he was only, what, a few weeks? (Stiles knows exactly how long: four weeks and three days, but prefers not to think about it.)

  
  


Scott just looks at him, frowning as he's queued in on his unhappy heartbeat and Stiles knows he must look the image of misery, he never did manage to look dignified post-crying. He thinks that maybe having Scott over wasn't such a great idea after all. Not when his best friend is clinging to his moral principles this much. Also Scott knows that sometimes there just isn't any saving of a failed relationship, that sometimes it's just better to leave it be and be done with it, not forcing what's already broken. 

  
  


“Stiles...”

  
  


“No, he doesn't get to come back and play wronged happy werewolf daddy,” Stiles snarls, actually fucking snarls at Scott, moving backwards and leaning his back on a cabinet door, drawing his legs up and hugging them. Scott moves back from him, flinching, his face an image of hurt. Stiles takes a deep sigh and looks at Scott again, hoping he'll understand. “At least not yet. I _can't_ let him in just yet. Too soon.” Not that he knows what would be no-to-soon, as he's on a life-changing event kind of schedule now. Unless. And he's a bit worried about that... unless. The way he keeps about thinking at things and adds an unless into it. 

  
  


And there's a list of unless-es that Stiles could and will most likely need to reconsider and think about in the coming months.

  
  


That he's going to be a single dad _unless_ he can find some way to forgive Derek. Which isn't happening _unless_ he goes through a memory wipe or someone proves to him without a shadow of a doubt that Derek was in some way be-spelled to hurt Stiles by cheating on him. That he's going to be a single dad _unless_ it's all actually one big humongous mistake or _unless_ something goes wrong (either magically or more than likely biologically or he has some sort of accident) and there will be no baby. In which case he'll still be alone but there will be no need to ever speak to Derek again if he doesn't want to. That he's unlikely to graduate _unless_ they can find a way to hide what Stiles is pretty sure no amount of baggy clothes and claiming to have gained a few pounds will ever be able to hide. 

  
  


Unless and rinse and repeat until forever after.

  
  


“My life's too complicated,” Stiles moans and buries his face into his hands, nose bumping into his upturned knees, hoping against all hope that he can just stay that way the rest of the day. Forget the world and all his worries and just be. He kinda wishes Scott would just go but at the same time hopes he won't, because he's not sure what he'd do with himself if left all alone. He' simply so tired and weary he feels it down in his bones. He's just so tired of it all. But his stomach suddenly growls making him aware of mundane everyday things like hunger and needing to eat. He sighs and resigns to his fate, which is not to wallow and face the world head on. Well, it is practically lunchtime. 

  
  


He looks up and there Scott is, sitting on the floor not far from him and looking at him with a face so concerned it makes Stiles cringe. The puppy dog eyes are in full effect.

  
  


“Want lunch?” he asks, raking his hands over his too long hair. He's not thinking about how Derek had done the same, just weeks ago, as he'd kissed a bruise on Stiles' neck, as he'd nipped, whispered 'I love you, I'm so sorry Stiles', into his abused skin. Nope, Stiles isn't thinking about that. And he hopes very much that Scott isn't picking up on his scent because he's sure he's smelling all kinds of a jumble of emotions. He doesn't wait for Scott's answer but just gets up and walks to the refrigerator to look at what's edible and quick to fix, opening the door to inspect the contents. He hopes there will be something that can be fixed somewhat quick, as he's in no mood to spend hours making food. His eyes are scanning the shelves as Scott comes up with a reply.

  
  


“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Scott is quick to answer and isn't fixating on Stiles' change of mood, which is good. “Have any meat or something?”

  
  


Stiles snorts. Werewolves and their hunger for meat. Not surprising, with their appetite and predatory nature. But he spots some hamburger meat so he can do some Bolognaise sauce. Why do they even have hamburger meat to begin with? He wonders this as he looks at the fat percentage. His dad's been shopping behind his back again, that is not good for his heart, that isn't. 

  
  


“Bolognaise?” he asks as he whips around to look at Scott, waving the meat packet in his hand.

  
  


Scott just grins back, goofy and pleased. “Hell yeah. Dude, that's awesome!” He loves Stiles' Bolognaise. And will most likely eat most of it, but that's okay, because then Stiles can keep his dad's grabby hands out of it. It's such a chore trying to keep his dad eating healthy. The man has no consideration for Stiles' worries over his health, sometimes. And now, more than ever, Stiles needs to keep his dad healthy.

  
  


But as Stiles turns away from the fridge and goes to rummage for some canned tomatoes, garlic, spices and spaghetti his mind starts to churn again.

  
  


Maybe the meat is a peace offering? Because his dad knows that Stiles loves his Spaghetti Bolognaise as much as the next teenager. And his dad must have known that Stiles would find it, especially as the package had been in the front of the shelf, where Stiles was sure to spot it. And Stiles really should stop over-analyzing a packet of simple too-fatty-for-his-dad's-arteries hamburger meat. 

  
  


Scott and him banter through the cooking and it's next to no time that they're both tucking into platefuls of spaghetti and the sauce, sprinkled over with some Parmesan that Stiles had dug out from a back-shelf where he'd hidden it. (He had hidden it even though his dad didn't really like Parmesan, but that wasn't any indication that his dad wouldn't eat it anyway.)

  
  


It was all good. The food was delicious and Stiles hadn't felt this relaxed since Friday. Maybe it would all be fine in the end. He even saved a little of the sauce for his dad and let him eat it when he got home late. His dad promised to not complain about his lunch on Monday, even though Stiles actually knew that his dad really liked the lentil-carrot pasta that he'd made for him after Scott had left and which was sitting in the fridge now. But he pretended not to, just as his dad pretended to not know he knew that Stiles knew.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Monday morning showed Stiles how wrong he had been when he had thought that things were going to be anywhere easy and even relatively normal. 

  
  


Isaac pounced on him very first thing, the bastard, cornering him by his locker even before Stiles had had a chance to roll in his combination and get out the book he needed. Isaac, ever creepy and disregarding things like personal space, leaned all too close and took a good long sniff along Stiles' neck. Stiles wanted to punch him, or run away and hide, he couldn't decide, okay. It was really disconcerting having a werewolf sniff at you neck like it was what they did every single day. 

  
  


And then Isaac was really really crowding Stiles in, getting into his personal space, all golden glowing eyes and too-close-get-off. Isaac's breath is hot and Stiles cringes, he doesn't want it that near, but Isaac's pinning him against the locker, not rough, mind, not letting him away. Stiles wonders where the hell Scott is, because he's not really any challenge to Isaac, he listens to no-one but Scott. He tries anyway, because words are his forte. That and his Spark.

  
  


“Too close Isaac, get off!” 

  
  


Isaac's there, all soft puffs of warm air and hands firm but gentle, for a heat beat more and then he's giving Stiles all the space he needs. The bustle of the hallway washes over Stiles in a rush and he hadn't even realized he'd tuned that much out. Isaac's eyes are back to normal now and he's actually giving Stiles a confused puppy face with a grin splitting his face. Which is... it's gives Stiles the creeps. Serious creeps. 

  
  


“You're having a baby.” 

  
  


Thankfully to Stiles' continued sanity and manly pride Isaac only whispers even when that seems way too loud for Stiles either way. Now there's only Isaac's insistent staring to contend with. And that way too wide happy smile which makes him look angelic. Isaac looks like he wants to make Stiles go home, wrap him in blankets and coddle him to sanity's edge. Figures that Isaac would go all mushy, not that Stiles had thought what he'd do when he found out that much beforehand. He was still having trouble figuring this post-Erica&Boyd Isaac out, this McCall pack Isaac who, Stiles sometimes felt, was trying to replace Stiles' place in Scott's life but at the same time was pushing between Scott and what he still seemed to have with Allison. (Not that Stiles had figured that all out, he'd had enough trouble and misery trying to sort out what his own love life was. Post-Derek, that is.) 

  
  


Stiles scuffs his converse against the floor and shifts in place, leaning against his locker because how is this his life? 

  
  


“Yeah. And if you could not make a scene and continue keeping your voice down there are... cupcakes in it for you. And dating advice in regards to Scott.” Stiles just has to grin wickedly, cartwheeling inside his head when Isaac blushes from his collar up all the way to the tops of his ears. Yeah, he'd got it right. No hiding it for you, wolf boy. 

  
  


“Deal,” Isaac says, staring at anywhere other than at Stiles, obviously operating the age-old method that if you can't see the person who made you blush, then you aren't actually blushing. “Can they be chocolate chip?” he then asks in a small voice, like he can't dare think that he's actually asking. And, lo and behold, the blush is deepening.

  
  


Because chocolate chip? Those are Scott's favorite. Seems Stiles' has found out who Isaac will be sharing them with. Not that he hadn't know about _that_ before. Everyone with eyes knew, could see the game Scott, Allison and Isaac had going on around each other, always so polite and thinking they were clever but actually fooling no-one. 

  
  


“Sure they can,” Stiles promises quickly, who knew that one way to Isaac's abeyance was through his taste buds? And his total and utter not so secret crush on Scott. Which Isaac wasn't hiding anymore. Interesting, that. Stiles was so roping Isaac into babysitter duty when the time came. “Dark or white?”

  
  


“Both,” they both snap around at the familiar voice and Stiles can relax some. 

  
  


And then, just like that Scott's there and Isaac's floundering a mile a minute but apparently couldn't hide his blush nor his heart rate from his Alpha. Who was now blushing a bit too. Even more interesting. Stiles will so grill Scott over that sometime later. The guy needs a serious push. Maybe Isaac will lure him in with those cupcakes? 

  
  


Also, Lydia owes him a twenty now.

  
  


“Isaac knows. Also, maybe you can talk about boundaries some time? Just a thought...” Stiles tells Scott and knows it's a fools errand when his best friend just steps into his space and hugs him both fierce and careful all wrapped into one hug. Well, Scott is exempt from the personal space rule, because they're bro's. Stiles also might need the hug, just a bit, an itty bitty bit. 

  
  


“Isn't it awesome?” Scott says as they walk into their first class, Stiles finally gotten the book he needed from his locker and Isaac trailing just a bit behind them, not knowing what to do with himself. 

  
  


Stiles sighs, of course Scott will always look at the bright side and not think of what can go wrong. Not that Stiles hopes anything will go wrong. (And it has nothing at all to do with the fact of how he thinks how Derek would feel if he found out that Stiles was having his baby and then the baby was gone. He'd probably kill himself. Stiles is not thinking about Derek and he's not admitting to himself that it was about the tenth time he'd already thought about Derek that morning. Also, not having the 'unless' thought marathon again today.) But it could. There were a number of things that could go wrong from a physiological point of view, then there was the magic and the magical miracle were-baby he was having and he so needed to go talk to Deaton even when the man was so irritating when you wanted information out of him that Stiles often wanted to gouge his eyes out whenever they met. 

  
  


Then he makes himself think positive thoughts. This will be the good thing that will come out of all the crap they had had to deal with the whole Alpha pack business and the Darach. This is family, family is always good.

  
  


(Even when Derek isn't family anymore...)

  
  


Even when he is but in a new way. 

  
  


Derek who he's trying not to think about but thinks about all the time anyway. Maybe he should stop trying not to think about him and it would lead to the desired result?

  
  


“Yeah, it kinda is, isn't it?” Stiles finally says and they go to class. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


“Well, it _would_ be your luck to have a magical mythical were-baby, if anyone,” Lydia just says, like it's the most normal thing in the world. 

  
  


Stiles sputters, gasps and just generally flails about, nearly falling from his chair. 

  
  


“What, no! What werebaby where?! There's no werebaby!” Denial, in Stiles' mind, is always the best policy. Not that he has any real thoughts that it will work when it's Lydia, bright Lydia who's even smarter than he is and will weasel the truth out of him in next to no time. He's not even sure why he wants to deny it, it's not like he doesn't want her to know just, maybe, having her know makes it more real. Like the more people know, the less it is something Stiles' can forget, pretend that it isn't happening. Not that he forgets, much. But he doesn't think about it the whole time either.

  
  


Lydia raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow as she sets down her history book. “Please! What else can it have been?”

  
  


Stiles buries his head in his hands. “I have to get less nosy friends.” This even when he knew privacy was a lost cause with werewolves and Lydia wasn't even one, but a normal bright and brilliant human. Just human yet in some ways more perceptive than some werewolves he knew.

  
  


“I'm not nosy, thank you very much, just observant,” she tells him and then she's there, familiar comforting hands around him in a warm welcome hug. “But how are you holding up? Because of...?”

  
  


“I'd rather _not_ talk about it, if you don't mind,” Stiles says. Because that's the truth. Because he doesn't want to tell her that sometimes he's scared, that sometimes he thinks he should call Derek because he would make it easier and then he thinks like that would be the worst idea ever. How he can want and not want Derek in his life both at the same time is a mystery to him but there it is. Yet this, this thing that doesn't even feel real to him even with all the medical evidence otherwise... it scares him more than anything ever has. The idea of becoming a parent, having to be there for another human being for the rest of his life, the enormity of it... 

  
  


He looks at her and just sees her, young and needing to do something for him because she's his friend.

  
  


“Anything you need, just ask,” she says and they go back to studying.

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stiles agonizes over his pregnancy, there is an attacking monster and cuddles. 
> 
> There is a lot of discussion about abortion in this chapter.  
> (See end notes for more specific triggers.)
> 
> \--- as for the rest. This chapter was beta'd by the lovely geeky and all and sundry should thank ILoveSterek for nudging me to remember to update. Maybe this chapter being longer than the two previous ones combined may absolve me somewhat from the sin of not updating for over a year... and some. Oops. I'm promising to try and be more updatey with this fic. I've really gotten into writing it again and hopefully will end up with more frequent updates now I've figured out how I'll end it.

It was in mid-November that they have lacrosse practice for the first time in two weeks. They'd had this break because Coach had an _incident_ (nobody wants to know, least alone Stiles) and while someone had been subbing for economics  there had been no-one subbing for lacrosse practice. Or any other sport, really.So, two weeks without practice, but now, now here they are again.

 

Stiles had just finished changing into his gear. But before he could go out onto the field, however, Scott tackled him to the floor in the most gentle way known to man. One minute he's standing and the next he's on the floor just in front of the locker-room doors leading out to the field.

 

“What the hell?” Stiles yelled when he’s suddenly horizontal instead of vertical, the tackle causing his body to go down under Scott’s. “Not cool, Scott!” 

 

His words were a gut response in more ways than one. Stiles suddenly felt a little nauseous and had to take a couple deep breaths to keep his lunch in. Sour bile rose up in the back of his throat, as his stomach began to roil. He glared up at a retreating Scott, who moves away as soon as Stiles was on the floor. He had been feeling a little better this week.Maybe part of it's been fucking _knowing_ what's the matter with hi m, even when it's not a _condition_ , well not a lethal one anyway. Yet because of Scott's actions he was feeling decidedly and unwelcomingly queasy. Stiles swallows the bile away, forcing his body to comply. Scott has now scrambled completely away from on top of him but is still an obstacle between Stiles and the door.

 

Scowling, Stiles looked up at Scott, the floor of the changing room cold and hard under his fingertips where he's curling them against it. Stilescontinued to scowl and swallowed again, took a few more deep, calming breaths to rein in his rebelling stomach, knuckles scraping against the floor as he fists his hands against the hard surface.

 

Scott gave him an apologetic little smile and it's almost too much. It kind of makes Stiles want to cry for a fleeting moment, even despite his annoyance. Scott smiled sheepishly at him while he finally helps Stiles up, but then, instead of stepping aside, Scott stood back on his way, blocking the exit. Isaac is looming by, ready to take action if needed, hands wringing at his lacrosse stick. Stiles scowled at him too as he's gripping his own stick again, a swoon making his equilibrium stutter after he's gotten up and is upright again. He missed the way Scott looks at him with concern written into every inch of his face.

 

“Lacrosse is a rough sport,” Scott informs Stiles, his first words _after_ gently shoving a _pregnant person_ down onto a concrete floor. A _dirty_ concrete floor, to boot.

 

As if this was news to Stiles. He glares at Scott and Isaac both, hands convulsively clutching at his lacross e stick, hoping that his face is a clear enough sign of his displeasure. If the two werewolves are able to sniff out emotions, Stiles is sure that they would be drowning in his anger right about now. Then it clicks, it fucking  _ clicks _ and Stiles groans. He doesn't think about why he didn't think about it right away, even with his indignation over Scott pushing him down in the condition he's in. 

 

“This is about the... ” he gestures vaguely at his mid-section.

 

He would say  _ baby _ but they're in the locker-room, so he doesn't. Because there are still a few people near enough to hear.  They're  lingering just inside the slightly ajar door or near the other lockers, looking in on the altercation between their co-captain and his best friend, filing out of the room with the speed of a glazier passing. It's not that he  _ can't,  _ or  _ won't _ say it, except he can't, not always. Not now anyway, with stray ears in hearing-range. He can’t say “because of the baby” or “because I’m knocked up” and not expect someone hearing and ending up with the school nurse worrying about his sanity. He cannot afford his pregnancy to become common knowledge, because of the supernatural element involved. Sure, he hasn’t really considered all the complications which are sure to come up when there  _ is _ an actual baby, but can’t really dwell on them right now, either.

 

So Stiles brushes all thosethoughts away and considers how saying “the baby” in reference to the cluster of cells within himself still feels weird on a thought level. You would think that a few weeks would be enough to really get used to the idea but it's still a bit, well, overwhelming. Even with the pregnancy tests and the blood-tests and both Ms McCall and Deaton _telling_ him they can confirm it via blood test and magic test respectively, with Scott and Isaac both telling him how they can _smell_ it on him. But then there have been days when his stomach has left him be and he's slipped, has forgotten. About the baby— never about Derek. Never how Derek had looked down at him that last night— knowing it was him, knowing what they had been to each other— knowing how much he had hurt Stiles when it had seemed that Derek himself had completely forgotten what had been between the two of them.

 

Because it had to have been  _ more  _ than just a tryst, no matter what some stray thoughts Stiles has had telling him otherwise, because Stiles knows, always knew after he found out about Kate, that Derek wouldn’t go into a relationship lightly. Which is why Derek and the Darach being together had seemed so very wrong.  (Not that Stiles finagling himself into Derek's pants when Derek had wanted to wait had been perfect in retrospect, either, because of what Kate had done to Derek when he had been younger than Stiles and her older than Derek now. But that milk is decidedly spilled and no use crying over it now.)

 

He remembers Derek's words, the fevered whispers of apology pressed into his skin amidst kisses and gentle nips, the overwhelming sense of  _ belonging  _ when their writhing had reached a sobbing, sweaty crescendo as Derek had filled him to the brink and then locked the two of them together. It had been almost too much, sensory-overload, but Stiles had shuddered through his own orgasm in Derek's embrace, impaled and impossibly full.  _ Knotted. _ For the first and only time. They'd been locked after that last time, linked and bound together, inseparable. Derek had held Stiles’ gaze for the longest time, agony clear in his eyes, a trembling making his hands shake. He had apologized over and over, holding Stiles and kissing him. Stiles had been happy, lazy in a post-orgasmic haze, clinging to Derek a reasonable amount... only to wake up the next morning, alone.

 

The words hadn't made all the hurt go away but they had helped Stiles cope in the first moments in the gray dawn light, when he'd been groggy and feeling dejected, when his mind had cooked up scenarios where Derek had just gone off on a morning run. Because surely, after they’d just gotten together, after Derek had claimed him in such a visceral and overwhelming way, Derek would  _ not _ leave.  Those s cenarios had evaporated the second Stiles had seen no note on the pillow  beside his head , when his insides had clenched tight and he had felt so... empty, hoping against all hope that there would have been one telling him that Derek was just off getting coffee or something. He had hoped, wished that he wouldn't be left alone, but that hope had gone with the absence of any note. But, the thing  _ is _ , the emptiness inside had settled then, and part of Stiles is thinking that maybe the magic responsible for their baby needed a contribution from him, too, a stupid wish of not being alone, that the magic had needed a nudge from his spark to flare to life, start growing another human being, or were-being.

 

He doesn't want to consider the possibility that he's carrying a born werewolf inside of him, because if the pregnancy and included parenthood scare him, then caring for a werebaby alone... yeah, that thought will remain un-thought for as long as Stiles can make it so. Even when he knows that the chances are fifty/fifty, maybe even more so in favor of were-genes passing on with the nature of the baby’s conception being magical and weres being all about magic..

 

And Stiles kn o w s that he couldn't,  _ shouldn't _ , would never keep the baby a secret from Derek. It was just that he didn't have the words ready yet, didn't have the courage to forgive Derek for something he really wasn't at fault for. Even when a part of him, some deep buried twisted facet of his personality does blame Derek and it makes Stiles feel sick. Derek's amnesia had been the Darach's doing, she had wiped Stiles and Derek's time together from the Alpha's head. The magic hadn't even wavered the many times Stiles had cornered the Alpha, barraging him with words  mixed in with tears ,  _ begging  _ him to explain why Derek didn't seem to remember  _ them _ .  Derek had been Stiles' Alpha, his boyfriend and the one whose orders Stiles had tried to follow, only misbehaving the order to leave Derek alone,  to wait . 

 

Even if Scott was the alpha in Beacon Hills now, Derek having given up his power for Cora so that she would live,  even then there is a part of Stiles which will always think of Derek as the Alpha instead of Scott .

 

“Stiles?” a voice tried to pierce his thoughts.

 

Scott, who was Stiles' best friend but now his Alpha and whose voice had yet to trigger an instant response to obey in Stiles. Scott with a love-triangle of his own, even when it was a happy one, with one party peering down over Scott's shoulder at Stiles while Stiles prevaricated.

 

Isaac had already been over-protective after one day in the know. It had been both sweet and insufferable. He had become more overbearing with each single day that had gone by. Okay, so it made Stiles forgive Scott for focusing on Isaac so much in days past, but Isaac's concern also drove him a little crazy. Lydia didn't seem to be too bothered... so far. Stiles feared for the time when she would deem that it would be okay to start buying baby-things. Stiled had nixed Lydia's shopper-instincts, which had awoken slowly but surely the very next day after Stiles had told her, and had declared that buying baby-things before the year was out would be tempting fate. Even if he was having a magical baby and growing it in a body not biologically designed for child-bearing, there were just some things you didn't do, among them buying baby clothes before the first trimester was even over.

 

Point is that Isaac is looking at Stiles with such worried intensity (his puppy-eyes are even more effective than Scott's) that Stiles deflates. The locker-room continues to empty out of the last stragglers around them and Stiles can hear the others sniggering and talking about the weirdness that is Stilinski.

 

Stiles sighs and glares at Scott, gripping his lacrosse stick tighter. He has to try; it's the principle of the thing more than anything else. He just...

 

“Scott,” he pleaded, hating it. He knows that their concern is valid. In a fit of recklessness, he kind of thinks that he doesn't care. Maybe it would just be easier if...

 

… if someone rushed into him hard, knocked into his stomach and started an inevitable chain of events ending with not having to have his life be harder than it needed to be, creatures of the night non-withstanding. There would be no need to have to tell Derek, let him back in his life even when Stiles really, really wanted him back, deep down. No need to try and come up with something to hide his changing body as the baby grew. No need to... Give up on the plans he'd had for his future. No need to grow up and be an adult and have to worry for another person for the rest of his life, his _own_ kid. Even if he had spent the last few years trying to make sure his dad didn't eat himself into an early greasy grave, his dad was an adult, not a helpless new thing which Stiles was sure he would ruin. For hadn't he shown already how easily he ruined the things he himself had wanted for himself? Wouldn't it be better if it was all gone?

 

God, Stiles hated being such a coward.

 

And all those thoughts, all these whatif's and unless'es... they didn't feel like his own thoughts, like he himself had thought them, like he ever would. He had been so sure that he could handle the situation somehow, because it was about family and the Stilinskis never walked out on family. There's a part of him that wants to take the easy way out, and that is not okay.

 

That's not Stiles... but it  _ has  _ to be him, right?

 

“Stiles?” Scott asks and makes Stiles take a step back because his best friend is right in his face, in his space. He's all concerned puppy-dog eyes, which is saying something when he's supposed to be the fucking Alpha. The word alone brings broody tones and a stony expression to Stiles' mind, it brings Derek. Scott's hand is on his arm, eyes intent on him, not letting him get away, look away.

 

And he's _not_ Stiles' Alpha.

“Don't coddle me...” Stiles doesn't mean the words to come out as harsh as they do but it seems his brain to mouth filter is severely compromised now with all the thoughts floating in his head. He just wants to go, play lacrosse (meaning sit on the bench and end up running suicides) and forget he's pregnant. Even if he might get pummeled, even if something might happen, even when he knows it's a bad, bad idea. Though… and the suggestion that maybe it _wouldn’t_ sneaks around his mind, a tendril of so much wrong. It continues to circle in his mind, trying to solidify.

 

Isaac fucking  _ whines _ . If he had an actual tail, it would be  tucked  between his legs  by now . Isaac's eyes dart between Scott and Stiles,  A lpha and pack-mate. “Stiles...” is all he says in the tail end of another loud, imploring whine.

 

“ _How_ can you _want_ to be this _reckless_?” Scott asks, trying to sound firm but getting jammed in pleading and cajoling. His eyes radiate hurt, his body-language desperation.

 

Stiles scoffs, crossing his hands over his chest defensively. “I'm not being reckless!” He hisses loudly even when he, Scott and Isaac all know it's a lie, would know even without freaky werewolf lie-detector powers. It's the way he says it that gives him away, it's his body language that screams the falseness of the words, no need to listen to his heart-beat ladies and gentlemen and werewolves...

 

Scott is looking out behind him, head craned, through the door leading out to the field. Undoubtedly, coach is wondering where the hell they all are, well, Scott and Isaac at least. Because coach wouldn’t care less if Stiles made it there or not. Scott's brown puppy eyes, how can he even have those being an Alpha now is surreal, land on Stiles pleadingly, all steel gone from them.

 

“What if you get knocked over bad?” Scott asks softly, voice veering on desperate; hand suddenly tight around Stiles' arm. “What if?...” His words makes the what-if's flock for attention in Stiles' head.

 

What if someone knocks you over? What if someone knocks into your stomach? What if you get punched? What if you slip and fall over? What if you start to bleed? What if your body can’t cope? Whatifwhatifwhatif?!!

 

_What if you let yourself get hurt, on purpose?_

 

Stiles closes his eyes so he doesn't have to see the worry on either of the two werewolves' faces. “Can't you let me have this?” he asks even when a part of him really wants Scott to stop him, make all these self-harm thoughts go away “it'll take my mind off... things.”

 

The darkness feels heavy around his heart. Maybe it's making him act irrational. Derek's behavior with the Darach, the memories of it surfacing now, aren't really helping, either. Nor are the memories of that last night, especially of those few things he hasn't yet shared with anyone. So full and content… loved. So empty and unloved, after-wards. Saddled with an impossible baby he wants to have and …doesn’t.

 

Isaac whimpers some more. He and Stiles aren't really friends, yet, but there _is_ something between them. Scott had made much up to Stiles after Isaac had seemed to try and steal him away from Stiles.

 

Stiles opens his eyes and looks at Isaac first. He just wants to go out there to the field, the thought suddenly spearing right though the rational part of his brain. Maybe he might fall over, get hurt, his problem solved. No need for Derek. No need to rearranging his life.

 

No need to have to see what  the color of his baby's eyes might be , if it would look like Derek, if it was a werewolf. No having to go through a pregnancy fraught with danger as his body  _ really  _ wasn't designed for something like having babies. 

 

No chance of ever seeing his dad smile wide and proud, holding his grand-baby in his arms. No chance of holding his and Derek’s baby and trying to figure out parenthood and how much he’d fail with it. No chance to try…

 

Stiles suddenly forgets how to breathe properly and the room starts to spin minutely.

 

“It's... fragile,” is what Isaac says and it, more than anything, just breaks Stiles. The tone, the words, the way Stiles _knows_ that Isaac is right.

 

Still the words come, the darkness not so easily shaken off and Stiles hates that it affects him so, hates that he cannot say that this _isn't him_. Cannot get those words out. Saying the ones he doesn't want to say instead. Hates that he can't seem to be able to breathe deep enough. Hates that Scott doesn't notice. Even when the shortness of breath doesn’t seem real…

 

“Not you too?” He says, tone exasperated even when his heart must tell the other two that he isn't exasperated at all. He draws air in yet feels like he's choking.

 

Even the part of him which doesn't want to let the baby go he just wants to go out there and play, or, in his case, warm the bench, just to get away from this situation. The concern shown towards him makes him feel warm inside, it does, but suddenly it also feels a little bit too much and he just wants it over. He just wants to fucking breathe!

 

“It's just fucking practice and I'll be careful!” Stiles gasps out.

 

Isaac whines again and looks at him imploringly. “You can't...” he says.

 

“Stiles, be reasonable,” Scott tells him.

 

Stiles scowls. “I'm not a girl!” he counters, hating himself for saying that because it's such a cliché, such a bad stereotype. Because women, girls, are not weak. His mom, Ms McCall, Lydia, and Allison are all a testament to it. Yet Stiles is pretty sure that all of them would handle a teenage pregnancy loads better than what he's currently doing, aside from the fact that their biology would make it be a thing that could happen without magic. It's the magic overriding Stiles' normal reproductive biology which has him tripping up the most, freaking out the most. And being so _alone_. 

 

The argument is cut off by Finstock yelling at them loud enough for Stiles to hear too to get their butts out to the field or face detention. It makes Scott and Isaac back off even when they both throw concerned looks towards Stiles. Scott is seemingly itching to make Stiles not go out, hands reaching out and then drawing back. But Stiles gives them the slip and heads out where they can't drag him away without calling attention to themselves.

 

Out on the field he feels like being able to breathe again, all hints of a panic attack gone. And that should worry him but doesn't, even when Stiles knows that his episodes never go away that easy. Yet the thought of it not happening like it ought to have gone gets buried pretty quick, like something does deliberately not want him to dwell on it.

 

Stiles is as careful as he can get away with without Finstock noticing and mocking him of being a loser. Scott and Isaac run interference for him, handling him with kid-gloves. Even after all he said before, Stiles  _ does _ shy away from contact and really tries to keep himself from getting knocked over. And as that feeling grows stronger, the darkness ebbs away, if slowly, taking with it all thoughts of possible self-harm or creating a possibility for getting hurt.

 

After practice, Stiles decides that he might indeed need to actually give up on lacrosse. He's aching all over, mostly from avoiding receiving any hits to his middle. It's really not worth the effort. He can't play hard enough to actually get anywhere when he's like this and he just feels tired with it all. And sore, can't forget the soreness. His body eats up more energy than ever now and he can't seem to get enough sleep even after a non-lacrosse day as the previous two weeks  _ without  _ a single practice have clearly proven to him. Either he has dreams  which wake him up or just can't get comfortable.

 

Stiles really is exhausted, thinking that he might be able to sleep through the whole night when he gets home even when that might not be enough. (Sleeping a whole week, though, that might be enough to drive away the bone-deep tiredness.) Scott eyes him warily, remaining back in the locker-room as Stiles struggles into his clothes, half-asleep and clumsy on account of his soreness and general weariness.

 

“Are you okay to drive home by yourself?” Scott asks him when Stiles is struggling with the pinnacle of evil that is trying to find where his sleeve openings are.

 

Stiles decides that his shirt is clearly possessed with the amount of trouble it's giving him when he's trying to fit his arms into his sleeves. Scott, bless him, comes to his rescue and soon Stiles' arms are inside his sleeves where they ought to be.

 

“Don't think I have the co-ordination for it just at the moment,” Stiles admits, a wide yawn cracking his face open. “Could you?”

 

“Sure.”

 

Scott drives Stiles home and then makes him food, making him eat as much as Stiles can stomach and Scott can coax him to try and eat. Then, after brushing of teeth and changing into soft-worn pajamas, Scott tucks his very tired friend into bed and then climbs right there with him and curls around Stiles.

 

“Sorry I haven't been there for you enough,” Scott apologizes when Stiles gives him a long look that trails over the way Scott's hands are draped around him, at the familiar way Scott just slipped under the covers next to him in a way they haven't done in what feels like forever, even when the cuddle is kind of nice, Stiles has to concede. Except the touchy-feeliness is not a new thing. Scott's decidedly been more tactile ever since becoming one of the werewolf persuasion but this, they've not cuddled in either of their beds since before Stiles started seeing Derek and a whole chunk of time preceding it. Sure, there have been bro-hugs and couch-cuddles but no in-bed-cuddles.

 

The last time Stiles was cuddled in bed was with Derek in what seems like eons ago, even when it's only been about two months.

 

They are silent for a while until Stiles speaks, his fingers curling into Scott's shirt, shaking a little.

 

“I'm not sure I can do this,” Stiles finally says with a hushed tone. He’s full of food and tired, so tired and bone-weary he wishes he _could_ sleep for a week. He's tried to keep from thinking the words let alone saying them out loud but there they are, out of his mouth. The tiredness might be a deciding factor in the words slipping out, yet Stiles curses himself for letting them out anyway.

 

Scott's arms tighten around him. Stiles kind of hates Scott for cuddling him for a nanosecond because even when Scott  _ is _ his best friend he  _ isn't _ the one whose cuddles Stiles needs and misses the most. He isn't Derek. Even if Derek really wasn't much for cuddles apart from post-coital.

 

And then, because this is Scott, there's more where the fierce cuddle came from. “I know what you've said but wouldn't it be better if...”

 

Stiles stiffens, he's so tired and he does  _ not  _ want to have this conversation now.  A lso, the dark part of him is  insisting that Scott is  actually telling him that it would be  _ okay  _ to get rid of the baby, because no Alpha in their right mind would want another former Alpha’s cub in the pack. It makes Stiles’ vision gray for a moment before the sane, somewhat sane anyway, part of him points out that it’s about calling Derek. “No,” he says, he's so tired and can't,  _ won't _ do this now. All he wants to do is sleep. Burrow against Scott's side, even when  _ he isn't Derek _ , to take what comfort he can have. What comfort he's allowed and can get in his Derek-less existence. He doesn't want those thoughts coming back.  He just w ants to shut the idea of calling Derek out of his mind. Even when he’s giving in to the darkness a little more with every new Derek-less day.

 

“But Derek...” Scott tries again. His hands rub circles over Stiles' back and Stiles hate-loves it.

 

He thinks to shrug Scott's hands off but doesn't. Instead, he sighs deeply. “All I wanna do is sleep, Scott...”, he whines, burying his face into the blankets, hoping that he sounds tired enough that Scott will let it go, at least for the night. There are circles and circles and circles all over his back, soothing, aggravating. A sense of safety/family/pack hangs in the air but never the sense of Alpha, at least not yet. Because Scott _is_ and _isn't_ his Alpha at the same time.

 

Scott sighs too. Then he settles closer against Stiles' side, slips a hand under his shirt for skin to skin contact and quickly leeches away some of the ache from Stiles' body before he can start to protest.

 

“Okay buddy,” Scott says after a few beats, after more tendrils of pain have ebbed away “but we _will_ talk about this again.”

 

Stiles can tell that Scott is trying for an  _ Alpha Voice _ _ ™ _ with the last few words but it falls a little short of the mark. He's too tired to try and think if it's because he knows Scott so well already so that his alpha-prowess doesn't affect him so much, or something else. Something like the feel of Scott as his Alpha/not-Alpha.

 

“Fine,” Stiles grumbles all the same and then falls silent and into sleep between one moment and the next.

 

* * *

 

“I'm gonna give up lacrosse,” Stiles tells his dad the very next day at breakfast. He sighs into his cereal and then yawns widely. He'd woken up alone, Scott having slipped out from his room sometime during the night. He hadn't been that aching this morning but had spent a good fifteen minutes in the bathroom throwing up his guts, before daring to face the sight of food, which hadn't made the start of his day much better. He is decidedly researching morning sickness remedies as soon as he can. Because even now, the sight of food is making him queasy. Stiles is just glad that there is no lingering smell of bacon or some other greasy food, because then he’d be sure to lose whatever content his stomach has.

 

His dad looks at him with some concern as Stiles carefully nibbles on his cereal. “You sure?” Dad finally asks, taking a sip of his coffee before setting his mug down and giving his son all of his attention. Which is a little unnerving, even when Stiles doesn't mind, not really anyway.

 

Stiles rakes a hand through his hair. “Yeah...” he sighs. “It's just too rough.” It's the truth too, yet it doesn't make it out of his mouth easily. That Scott used the exact same words isn't helping either.

 

A hand reaches out for him over the table, grabs his hand and squeezes it tightly. Stiles looks up at the concerned look on his dad's face.

 

“I'll support you whatever you do,” his dad tells him. “But maybe it would be for the best. After all, lacrosse _is_ a rough sport.”

 

Stiles chuckles darkly. “That's what Scott said, verbatim,” he tells his dad, thankful of the big warm hand around his own and his dad's support in this unexpected situation. The morning sickness less than half an hour ago had brought it all back into the lime-light. Not that Stiles can ever forget, now, just how things are and what he has growing inside of him and what all the situation will eventually entail, not that Stiles is actually thinking that far ahead. If he were, he would be in a state of constant panic.

 

“Well he's right, especially when you're...” and it seems his dad can't really say it aloud either, say either _pregnant_ or _having a baby_ , to refer to the absurd condition Stiles is in.

 

“...pregnant,” Stiles fills in for his dad with a somewhat bitter tone, and they share a look.

 

His dad shakes his head a little. “I know I was with you in all the tests and everything but it kind of doesn't seem real, does it?” Dad says, echoing what Stiles has been thinking about a lot.

 

Stiles leans back in his chair and looks up at the ceiling. “You have no idea,” he sighs. “Even with werewolves, magic and dark druids this just seems... ridiculous. Though the morning sickness is making it feel more real than it has any right to be…” He swallows carefully and evades the sight of any food for a moment as a wave of nausea washes over him.

 

The situation _is_ ridiculous.

 

That's just the word for it because that's what it is, completely and utterly ridiculous. Him being pregnant that is. Up the duff. Knocked up. With a bun in the oven. In a delicate condition. In the family way.

 

Dad coughs and then sighs long and deep. “You know, even when it doesn't seem real now, you could always...” dad swallows in and sighs again,“...if you wanted. Might be easier in the long run.” It sounds like it costs him to say it, but in a way like it would cost him more not to say it anyway.

 

The words make Stiles head come up and for him to lock eyes with the sheriff. There's silence for a long time in the kitchen after that. They just stare at one another as it stretches on.

 

Stiles  _ knows  _ what dad is saying. Knows that it might be easier if this was all gone, knows it in some intellectual level. There  woul d be one less thing to worry about in his supernatural-adjacent life. Well, as he is pregnant with the aid of magic he can hardly call his life adjacent anymore,  for he is, to all intents and purposes, right in the middle of a supernaturally created issue with the magical miracle pregnancy . Yet the thought  of... ending it , even with the rationale behind it leaves a bitter taste in Stiles’ mouth. Thoughts of having it easier and just getting rid of… they seem wrong. They leave it at that for the time being, neither ready to put it in words, to make it a more real possibility than what it is when unsaid, kept silent. Even when they both know there is little possibility to have an abortion in the conventional sense, because Stiles doesn't have the correct anatomy for non-medical abortion and is skirting the edge of the time-frame of just medicinal being the only option  anyway .  Even when that probably would not be an option, either, because of the magic involved and... other reasons.  But Stiles' dad is in the know now and must have figured out that there might be a magical solution to it.

 

Maybe. It's better left unsaid, for now, at least. Still the thought festers, fuel for the darkness slumbering in Stiles’ heart. His dad, thankfully, changes the conversation into the topic of crackers as a morning sickness remedy, for which Stiles is glad.

 

* * *

 

Stiles doesn't think more about it until a week later when he's attacked. By a fucking  _ lamia _ ! None of them would have thought that a monster  originating from ancient Greek, one  that ate babies (!), would make its way into Beacon Hills. Yet here she is in the flesh, wanting to fill her belly with his.

 

Sometimes, Stiles  _ really  _ hates his life.

 

The woman croons at him, her voice mingled with hissing. “You smell so good,” she hisses with a thick accent, which is crazy because you would think an ancient monster would have had the time to perfect her language skills in the centuries she has been slithering around. Her scales hiss on the brown leaves scattered over the forest floor as she slides closer. Her face is pretty, its gorgeousness marred only by her hungry stare, even when the rest of her is eerie, her bottom half a serpents tail but her top that of a woman from the waist up. Her hips sort of merge into her scaled tail, her torso almost incongruously covered with a... t-shirt. Who knew ancient mythical creatures had any modesty? Yet she must have also been wearing a skirt of some sort at one point, as swathes of something flower patterned still cling to her tail. So, not so much modesty as her having been in human form and dressed like a college sorority girl.

 

Stiles is curled down on the ground in a fetal position, knees tucked  up to cover his abdomen, gasping for breath after she  ha d struck him across the face. She'd chocked him until he'd blacked out when she  ha d first attacked,  suddenly  yanking over the door of his jeep with preternatural force when he’d been driving home. But now here he is with his jeep nowhere in sight and awake, because apparently she wants her prey to struggle before their untimely demise. His head is still ringing from when he hit it earlier and he feels bile rise in his throat. His hands are bound so he can't get up, doesn't stop him from trying, though. His heart is beating in his throat and he  _ cannot breathe _ .

 

“Please...” Stiles sobs as she slithers closer. “Please...” His world has shrunk into the sight and sound of her slithering closer to him, of his own pleading voice and heart beating loud in his ears. His chest is one big aching thing, his lungs on fire, and his head is just about ready to pop off. His fear, he's sure, is a tangible taste in the air, must be, with the way her forked tongue slides in and out from between her lips, tasting the air.

 

The half form thing she’s got going on must be the reason for her not just luring him to give her his life willingly and eagerly, as the later ancient Roman incarnation of her brand of crazy had been wont to do.

 

She bows over him, taking hold of him and yanking him up onto his knees, looking at him with her serpent ine eyes. He covers, for she looks so inhuman, even more so than the werewolves that he knows. They're still all mostly human after they transform but this woman, this lamia, she's half snake. Bottom half all scales while the upper half of her is all human with human skin and human breasts and limbs, only her eyes betraying her. And the fangs, the very scary intimidating fucking fangs. Also, the way she keeps sniffing at him, all snake-like with her fucking  _ forked tongue  _ tasting the air, is less than human.

 

And Stiles  _ knows _ , with a crystal clear clarity, why he's awake. She  _ wants  _ to taste his fear, lapping at it with her forked tongue. She wants her prey to give her that before she takes what she wants, what she thinks is her due. No seduction in her game plan, apparently. His loss. Though the end result of her seducing him to kill him would still leave him just as dead. 

 

“Are you not precious, a marvel?” She murmur-hisses, there's no other word for her speech pattern, her tongue flicking over his face, savoring his all-encompassing fear, as he struggles in her firm grip. “A boy with young...”

 

A hand moves and is splayed o ver his stomach, suddenly sharp nails piercing the fabric, just nicking the sensitive skin there and her tongue laps at his pulse, more erratic by the minute, as blood rushes in Stiles ears and he screams. Not a word but a voiceless scream, his version of a howl. Even when Scott  _ has _ to know that he's in trouble, must have found the jeep already, halfway in a ditch with the door ripped nigh off its hinges. With blood on the steering wheel where Stiles' face had hit  it  when the lamia had jumped his car.

 

Stiles' small comfort is that the serpent woman doesn't have any type of kanima'esque venom to try and paralyze him with, though she doesn't seem to need any with her preternatural strength easily pinning him in place. With his hands bound behind him Stiles has limited options anyway. He hurts, oh fuck how he hurts as her grip leaves bruises on his skin, though they may not have time to bloom from dark to yellow.

 

Because he'll be dead, body ripped open and his baby and his own flesh devoured to sate her fondness for younger than young human flesh.

 

Time, he needs time, not a panic attack. Because he knows, oh how he knows, that if she moves and gets her fangs on his stomach, it'll all be over. She won't stop until she's eaten through his body, eaten his baby and will then leave him to bleed to death right there among the rotting fall-leaves. It’s not the icy November wind scattering the leaves and hurling her hair this way and that which makes Stiles shiver. It is fear for his life.

 

“I thought lamia only ate children...” he says, heart hammering in his chest, trying to keep breathing so he can try and stall, not faint without enough air. His voice is shaking and stuttering, the syllables falling all over each other but he gets the words out mostly intact and understandable. Facts about the Greek lamia who ate only children after having lost their own and the Roman lamiae who seduced young men for their blood jumble around in his head in the cacophony of his panic. Though she’s not even tried to seduce him, unless her seduction includes crazy Dom/Sub tones, so she must be the former.

 

As Stiles shakes he wishes he could be somewhere else, that he could get out of his head, faint and not be awake for this. He's so _tired_ of struggling. Wouldn't it be easier to just give in? It would solve all his problems quite neatly. 

 

She laughs a shrill tinkling chuckle that will echo in Stiles' nightmares if he lives through this.

“Boy...” she pushes him down, flat on his back onto the ground, looming over him, her upper body suspended quite easy-looking by her serpent-half and Stiles really shouldn't let his mind wander, not at a time like this. Not now when a crazy serpent-monster wants to eat _through_ him. “You are _both_ children, and not simply because I am old, older than what your young mind c ould ever even hope to comprehend, you will _both_ do. And I am fond of both child-flesh and that of young men, that you are both is a marvel.” She bends closer, her tongue flicking over his cheek, “such a tasty morsel, you both are.”

 

Great, she just had to go and confirm Stiles' worst suspicions about her intentions and the situation he's in. He resents being referred to as a  _ boy _ since, and here he really wishes that his mind wouldn't go off on tangents, in her day, if she hails from ancient Greece or Rome or both, he would have been called a man. Also, how can he be a boy when he's clearly n ot a virgin and is also on his way into teenage parenthood? If he lives, that is. Because if he doesn't manage to fight her off, if Scott doesn't come for him, he would never be an adult... at least in the eyes of the law. Over a year of running with werewolves, being in near-death situations more than he wanted to count and being  _ pregnant _ kind of made it a moot point in Stiles' mind, though.

 

“I'm _not_ a child!” he screams as she backhands him, as she slithers over him and hisses and pries at his clothes. There's a tongue slithering on the bare skin of his stomach, over the barely noticeable swell of his stomach, over the bleeding claw-marks she left behind mere moments ago, and he knows he's going to die. That this is fucking it. She'll scent her fill and then bite in. 

 

Still, he struggles for all he's worth, unwilling to go down easily. Also, he really doesn't want to die. Not yet. Not without seeing ---

 

“Yes,” she hisses, “you are... mmmm, your young smells delicious...”

 

He r tongue laps at his skin and he struggles, the world spinning around him with no air making it into his lungs, he tries to dislodge her, he really does, but to no avail. He still struggles because he can't  _ not  _ struggle. He  _ has  _ to. But he cannot breathe, dark spots  are  starting to cover his vision, fraying the edges of his consciousness. It's not a merely maternal instinct, he's thinking about his own survival. Well, if he dies, they both do. So maybe it is. There isn’t a single thought of getting rid of the baby now in his head. He wants to live, wants to see his baby born, wants to see his dad hold it, wants to see Derek’s smile  in awe in the face of what they’ve  created together…

 

“...Derek...” tumbles a whisper from his rasping, gasping lips as he tries to ---

 

Then an arrow flies through the lamia's head, right through her skull and she rears back, roaring in pain, still alive despite the arrow piercing her skull. Her ancient reptile blood splatters over Stiles' face in cold droplets and her claws rake over his stomach as she trashes, her tail hitting him in the side as she backs away. Someone grabs at Stiles and he struggles, utterly panicked, unable to breathe. Thinking only of 'awayawayaway' and 'wanttolivedon'twannadie' and 'DerekpleaseDerekhelp'.

 

“Hush, it's Scott! Scott!” And Stiles goes under knowing he's been rescued, giving in to oxygen deprivation, the feel of Alpha-pack-safe washing over him when he loses consciousness.

 

* * *

 

Stiles wakes up in the hospital. 

 

He  _ hates  _ waking up in the hospital. He's spent all too much time in Beacon Hills County Hospital.  Dad is holding his hand, the warmth and strength  of his grasp  familiar, and the heart monitor picks up as Stiles struggles towards coherence. A post-attack adrenaline rush whooshes over him as he tries to process the fact of still being alive. Of still having this, his dad's hand in his own a solid comfort. He cannot seem to clear his head, feeling all mushy and like it’s filled with cotton balls. 

 

“I hate this hospital,” Stiles tells his dad with a raspy voice, grateful to still have a voice, to have a body to wake in, be alive in.

 

Dad shakes his head, squeezes his hand, “I know,” he says. “Just glad you're okay.”

 

“Where are the---”

 

Dad cuts his question off before he can even finish. “They're ---” but dad, too, is cut off by the door springing open and the pack practically falling in.

 

Stiles shakes his head on the pillow to make his eyes focus properly and takes them all in, still groggy and just this side of being awake; Scott, face a little frantic still but relieved more than anything, Allison and Lydia clutching each others hands, Isaac wringing his own at the edge of the group. And then there's Scott's mom, closing the door behind them all.

 

“We're keeping you overnight,” she tells him,”you got pretty banged up. Bruises and some nasty cuts on your abdomen...” She trails off and Stiles knows that she knows and has seen the claw marks spaced like someone sank their fingertips into his flesh. He doesn't get the chance to ask before she beats him to it. “The baby's fine, you're both fine, though I've had to do some finagling to keep it secret. Let's just say you're lucky some of the staff are a bit incompetent or don't care.”

 

“Or have learned to not ask too many questions because they _don't_ want to know?” Stiles asks, suddenly realizing it must be a thing factoring in, too.

 

“Yeah, that too,” she confirms as the pack piles onto chairs (Lydia and Allison) and the edge of the bed (Scott and Isaac).

 

Stiles sighs, really  _ not _ wanting to think about anything for a bit, closes his eyes and drifts off, feeling safe if not entirely content. Because being content is something he doesn't get to have anymore, because contentedness is Derek-Hale-adjacent. The feeling of  _ pack  _ around him means safety, family and love, but not 100% contentedness. And those things are enough now. Mostly since Stiles can't be bothered to think about it, being so tired and sore. He might think about it later, after he's slept. He’s alive, so he gets the luxury of rest.

 

He falls back into sleep so quick he even forgets to ask if the monster is dead.

 

* * *

 

The next time Stiles wakes up to see a room with only his dad and Scott in it, he’s told, very gently and calmly, that the monster isn’t, in fact, dead. The ensuing panic attack is practically rote.

 

* * *

 

“Is there a spell to end it?” he asks Deaton three days later, voice pleading, when he’s managed to get a moment alone with the vet. Deaton had checked out the claw-marks the lamia had left behind when Stiles had still been in the hospital. He doesn’t remember much about that, though, since he’d been still groggy and sleepy with whatever pain relief his pregnant-self had been allowed to have. The regular kind of pain-relief, mind. Because he'd had as much werewolf pain-leeching as he’d wanted and needed and it had been sort of awesome, even if he'd been a little high on it.

 

Stiles indicates his stomach with a wave of his hand, like Deaton wouldn’t get what he’s talking about otherwise. He'd finally gotten discharged after a night under observation at the BHCH and had then spent the weekend sleeping in his bed under dad's watchful eye. Stiles thanks his lucky stars, or whatever deity is watching over him, that his magical impossible pregnancy situation had gone unnoticed during his hospital stay. Because with exposure came scrutiny and the possibility of being locked in a secret government facility to be poked and prodded and possibly dissected. (Stiles may or may not have been thinking about the possibility quite a lot. He blames bad scifi and an excess of comic book reading in his past for this strain of paranoia.) He owed Scott's mom so much in the way of thank-you’s. And hugs, even when he'd given her a really long one before his dad had taken him home. There were some gratitude cupcakes in Melissa McCall’s future. (She also liked mixed-chocolate cupcakes like Scott, so Stiles would need to sternly remind Scott not to steal any of them.) Allison was getting a batch of dark chocolate & raspberry one's. The rest of the pack... well, they might get cupcakes if Stiles felt up for it. (The same for Scott as for his mom, blueberry for Lydia and milk chocolate for Isaac.)

 

When Stiles had gotten to go home, the pack had invaded and they'd stayed to watch some movies and had discussed the fact of the lamia actually not being properly dead yet, going over the details which had remained unsaid in the face of Stiles’ panic attack the first time they’d told him. The lamia had managed to evade their attempt to track it, which had been quite a feat with the amount of blood and gore Scott had told him she had left behind when she’d fled. But they’d had to let her go in favor of imminent pursuit by the whole pack to get Stiles into the hospital. Isaac and Allison had given chase while Scott and Lydia had rushed Stiles into the BHCH and called his dad about what had happened. The lamia had only needed the few minutes of confusion to cover her tracks.

 

The information hadn't made Stiles happy. Also, it had meant that he'd been attached at the hip by at least one member of the pack or his dad or both a pack member and his dad, though his dad seemed to kind of be a semi-pack member, at all times in the very likely event that the lamia would be back for revenge and to finish her interrupted meal. Meaning Stiles and his baby.

 

But on Monday after school Stiles had managed to shake them all off for a little while, sort of confident that the lamia wouldn't be insane enough to attack him in broad daylight in the middle of town. Yet he knew he only had ten, fifteen minutes tops, before someone barged in on him and Deaton, so he had spat out his question the second he was inside the doors to the clinic and saw the man. He  _ needed  _ to know if there was any possibility of... not having to end up prey for monsters with a penchant for baby-flesh because he was pregnant, since the lamia was roaming around. He knows it's a coward’s way out, kind of, but there are legitimate health concerns too. First and foremost his body not being designed to be pregnant despite some freaky magic intent on making it happen. And magic’s basically his only option at this point, had maybe always been his only option because of anatomy. But maybe – and the thought is in his mind and gone like something in him is trying to prevent him from thinking it – the part of him thinking about an abortion isn’t really him at all and is thinking about the option with no health considerations in mind. No, it’s the part which thinks he should just not be pregnant because it’s the easy choice.

 

And that’s not him, it really isn’t.

 

“None that I know,” Deaton answers, breaking Stiles out of his reverie. “This kind of magic is tricky at the best of times and any meddling might prove lethal for you too. It’s an intricate sort of magic. Any meddling from someone who didn’t know precisely what they were doing could end up killing you both.” The look he gives Stiles is apologetic, like he really is sorry. Yet there is something. Like he _knows_ that everything’s not right in Stiles’ head. The man is way too intuitive for Stiles’ liking.

 

Even when part of Stiles wants someone,  _ anyone _ , to notice he’s not completely right, wants someone to ferret out that all the thoughts of getting rid of the baby are not  _ his _ . 

 

“Can you look into it anyway?” Stiles pleads, _‘can you not, tell me you won’t, please notice how wrong me asking this is…’_. He's convinced that Deaton must be exaggerating. That this is just another case of him not telling everything he knows. “Please?” He adds, not averse to begging when things are dire. He feels bad for even asking, even considering, even when part of him is sort of indifferent, maybe even for having an abortion. But that’s what he wants, right? It would be better if there was no baby. No need to be another thing to Derek to feel sorry for, when he will fail anyway, when his body is what kills both of them, or when the lamia is on his scent and succeeds in eating th rough them both. Even when that wouldn’t be right, isn’t.

 

Deaton just looks at him for a good long while, making Stiles fidget. Maybe he notices, maybe he doesn’t, it ´ s hard to tell with Deaton. Then the vet just sighs, “if you are  _ absolutely _ sure , Stiles.” He knows,  _ has  _ to.

 

Stiles nods. “I'm sure,” he tells Deaton, even when he’s not. When he wants to shout how not sure he is, how much he doesn’t want --- but then, there’s the lamia. And it won’t hurt asking, will it? “With the lamia hounding after me…”

 

He doesn’t get to finish his thought because, at that very second, a severely disgruntled looking Scott is barging  in  through the door and that’s that. Stiles cannot tell Scott that he’s even considering an abortion. Not even when Scott  _ might  _ understand that it would be because of the lamia and because of Stiles’ doubts. Which don’t even feel his own most of the time. Because it’s the darkness within which whispers obscene mad ideas into Stiles’ mind, not the real him. And with a shake of his head and the wash of Alpha/pack/safe that springs forth from Scott’s smile the thought is away, like it never was, darkness quelled for as long as Stiles is with pack.

 

“What’s up, bro?” Stiles greets his best friend, his brother and not-quite-Alpha-but-getting-there.

 

“Stiles…” Scott’s voice tries for admonishing but gets stuck on hopelessly fond and exasperated.

 

Stiles affects bashful nonchalance with a hand rubbing at his hair. “Yeah, I know, man… but, nothing happened, right?”

 

“This time…” Scott crosses the room in swift even strides as Deaton seems to blend into the background somewhere. Scott gently cuffs the back of Stiles’ head and then hugs him.

 

“But you’ll always make with the heroic rescue, right?” Stiles’ words get buried into Scott’s shoulder, muffled by fabric. “You with the alpha-roar, Allison with her bow, Lydia pinpointing the imminence of my looming near-death-experience and Isaac beating them into submission with his cherubic pouting, you’ll get me out.” It actually _had_ been Lydia getting  a vision of Stiles dying which had helped save him from the lamia, had gotten the pack on the scene in time.

 

Scott gives him a long look, prying him farther from his shoulder and a rather decent bro-hug to sort-of-glare at him. Too bad Scott’s permanent puppy-dog-eyes take the edge off from the glower.

 

“No?”

 

The words are slur-growled into his shoulder as Scott reels him back in. “Don’t take chances like that, Stiles, okay? Not now.”

 

Stiles promises to try and not to, though both of them know it’s an iffy promise at best. Scott takes him home, sort-of-lecturing him about responsibilities and the dangers of a pissed-off supernatural threat along the way, and stays guard all through the next morning and into school. School, where Stiles is flinching at any sudden approach by anyone not pack with a hand curled over his lower stomach as the darkness ebbs and flows in his head, pushing him to accept ending the pregnancy as the best option. Even when it would leave Derek bereft if he ever found out. Leave himself with a lifetime of what-could-have-been’s and regrets.

 

_ Yet you’re coward and angry enough to not tell him even now, aren’t you?  _ A voice whispers deep in Stiles’ mind when he lets his  thoughts drift, usually in the dead of night. The hurt of Derek casting him aside, of him between  _ her  _ splayed legs, the  _ moans _ flash right after, as do instances of Derek’s eyes seemingly fleeting over him, not recognizing or acknowledging that they ever had anything between the two of them. If it’s the early hours of the morning, what follows is bile rising up in Stiles’ throat, making him dash into the bathroom to hurl and often end up a sobbing, wailing mess on the floor, overwrought with everything. His dad, if he’s off-shift, will usually come to rub at his back, hug him and whisper words of comfort, which too often ring hollow, to Stiles’ ears.  If not him, whichever pack-member is on Stiles-watch will do the same.

 

Then there are nightmares, making him bolt up sitting in bed in the dead of night, only to be enveloped in strong, calming arms and words which he doesn’t register for a long time being whispered into his ears. His dad, Scott and Isaac are usually the ones shushing him. Within the first week of the pack being on Stiles-watch even Lydia makes a surprise appearance and Allison is in the rotation too. But none of them help as much as the only person who could would be able to help. The one person not there: Derek.

 

The nightmares are traumatic affairs concocted by the darkness eating at Stiles’ heart, stirring up his worst fears to a fever-pitched terror which swallows him up. He dreams of the lamia’s attack, of her inhuman visage, of her talons ripping more than just skin deep, delving deeper than deep, past muscle and sinew, through flesh and deep within where Stiles’ baby is. And in the dreams Stiles isn’t conscious of being asleep and he feels the whole thing, is alert throughout, because he knows, through traumatizing information-gathering sessions, that a lamia keeps her victims alive until the very last moment, reveling in the horror of seeing your flesh rent to pieces and your baby ripped from your body.

 

But those, the lamia-dreams, based on the actual attack which had happened, are not the worst of the lot, not by a long shot.

 

Because then there are dreams in which it is Stiles’  _ own _ hands, nails sharpened into claws, digging into his stomach, trying to gouge the baby out.  Derek’s in them, watching at Stiles, looking at the claws rending open a body, Stiles’ body, not built for pregnancy and reaching for the baby inside, trying to kill one of the scariest yet awesome things that have ever happened to Stiles. And Derek is crying, pleading with Stiles, trying to get to him but being held back by the Darach, wearing not Jennifer Blake’s face, but the scarred ruin of a woman called Julia, being held back by the roots of the Nemeton reaching out for him. Being held back and words drowned in tears and howls of agony as Stiles kills what should be hope for a man who has lost more family than anyone would ever be thought to survive from and surviving anyway. A man betrayed by the boy he loves, just like he was betrayed by the woman he thought loved him back but who killed almost his whole family. And it is her voice whispering into Stiles’ ear and then he always sees himself from afar and Kate Argent’s likeness is briefly juxtaposed over his own, until he becomes her and she’s slicing a knife into her pregnant belly, telling Derek how he doesn’t deserve to be a father, how no-one would want to give birth to a half-breed mongrel anyway. 

 

So, the thing is  that Stiles wakes up from his nightmares howling and trashing. But when it’s the Kate- one, it takes forever to calm him the fuck down. Because it leaves him too raw and is too close to the kind of thoughts which sometimes cross his mind when he’s awake. And because he thinks that Derek might see him as her, for keeping this from him. Or something. The longer he keeps the baby from Derek, the more he’s hurting him, hurting the both of them. Even when Derek  _ might  _ already know there’s a baby, which is the scariest thought of all. 

 

Because if he knows, he would be here, with Stiles, wouldn't he? That he's not...the idea of that does not lead anywhere good.

 

* * *

 

In the end, Deaton tells him that there's nothing for it, when Stiles manages to slip away after eight days of lamia-high-alert and badly slept nights with an average of two nightmares a night. There are a few non-invasive and low risk spells for birthing if your body isn't really designed for it but no safe spells for ending a pregnancy such as his. The magics that have made it possible for Stiles to be pregnant are just too delicate to be meddled with safely, as Deaton had told him when he’d first asked. And that's that. Nothing, save for a miscarriage, which Deaton tells Stiles would likely be equally as dangerous as any of the spells, will make the baby issue go away.

 

And so Stiles is left with his increasingly dark and depressing thoughts, but not alone.

 

“I know becoming a parent this young wasn't in your plans, son,” dad tells him when Stiles informs him that, save for an accident; the pregnancy will have to run its course. And then Stiles will be a parent. At eighteen. Around the time he should be graduating. Not what his plans had been at all. Stiles doesn’t share all his anxieties with his dad but dad knows about the lamia and her preference for the flesh of babies and for Stiles’ flesh. Knows, even though Stiles hasn’t said, hasn’t been able to bring himself to elaborate on the content of his nightmares, that the nightmares have been focusing on Stiles’ fears of impending parenthood and all the dangers the pregnancy will bring with it. Partly because Stiles isn't exactly quiet when he dreams, especially loquacious during nightmares.

 

“You could say that,” Stiles replies ruefully as he flops down onto the couch.

 

How is this his life? Of course there wouldn't be a way out. Not that he really wants a way out, not with the traumatic nightmares more firming his resolve to see the pregnancy through than actually end it, in a backwards way. … even when not all doubts have gone off and when there is that dark voice sounding too often like Kate Argent whispering how he doesn’t want Derek’s baby, not really. How he’ll fail in this, be just another tragedy for Derek to live with. Of course, when those thoughts had started to appear in Stiles’ head, his nightmares had begun to include ones where Stiles dies of childbirth or the baby is stillborn. In them, Derek is always hovering, restrained, on the edges of Stiles’ consciousness, witnessing Stiles’ failure with Stiles feeling Derek’s agony in his bones. Those nightmares always end up with him a sobbing mess once he’s woken up properly enough to do more than just flail about.

 

“But I don't still quite get why you went through all of this, well, finding out if you could end it” his dad says, “because when you first found out, you said that you'd...” the words trailed off.

 

He’s confused, rightly so, since Stiles knows his dad knows what the major gist of his nightmares are. Stiles knows that his dad knows about the ones where the baby dies or Stiles dies or they both do, because after the first one he and dad had talked about it afterwards, with Stiles sobbing “What if it dies before I even get to hold it?” into his dad’s shoulder, shaking in his arms. That had been such a fun night to go to school after, the next day. (He'd ducked out early, unable to focus properly.)

 

Stiles buries his face in his hands, anything to not have to look  his  dad in the eyes.  Stiles been in a state of confusion and constant anxiety for weeks now, the pregnancy, hormones, sleep-deprivation and the horrid thoughts of wanting to kill his child vying for dominance in his waking hours that he often can’t shuffle out what are his thoughts and what are the darkness’, anymore. He sometimes wonders if walking  out into the preserve and chopping up the Nnemeton or burning it up would make the darkness go away. Sometimes it feels like it’s eating  him  up, bit by bit until he’ll be the kind of man who would flippantly resort to abortion because of the mere  _ inconvenience _ having a child,  a child which would be  _ so _ loved, would be. 

 

Stiles doesn’t want to become that sort of man, not ever. 

 

But he forces his head up, because he needs to be the kind of man not willing to lie to his dad. Needs to lay out all his anxieties, so that his dad can help him deal, can help him cope. And maybe tell him he’s being an idiot and should just call Derek and come clean about the baby. Because he needs to call Derek.

 

Yet…

 

“Well, I can change my mind, can I?” The words feel foul on his tongue. “And after that baby-eating monster wanting to eat through my stomach to make a snack of my... baby, and _me_ might I add, can you really blame me? And I just... feel _so fucking alone_.” He wants to elaborate on the darkness whispering to him, of the wrongness of some of the thoughts that come into his mind, unbidden. But he can’t. Something is clogging his tongue, trying to keep the words in. “…And I…” he gulps, his hands shaking on the  top of the coffee table, long fingers tapping a demented staccato as he struggles to breathe, because he has to get the words out, has to say them, tell his dad even when just thinking about saying them is making him feel like he’s dying “…have these… thoughts, like it would be _better_ if I wasn’t, like my life would be easier…but I --- they’re not, I’m ---” 

 

There are spots dancing across his vision and he cannot breathe, cannot draw in air as the darkness within is trying to trigger a panic attack. But he bites his tongue, tastes blood in his mouth and  _ forces  _ the words out even when it makes his vision blur and his ears ring, the room starting to spin around him.  “But that’s not me, I swear it isn’t… it’s like someone else - - -”

 

And he’s shaking now, good and proper, his head swimming as the living room spins in his vision, dad’s voice barely registering, his body listing side-ways. It feels like his heart is being squeezed out of his chest and he’s spinning, everything spinning ---

 

* * *

 

Stiles thankfully comes to when John rubs a soothing circle on his chest with a shaking hand. His son had fallen down off from the couch, almost braining his head open on the coffee-table, only John’s quick response to his panic attack saving him from injury. Now Stiles is lying on the floor by the sofa, the coffee table having been shoved to the side to give more space. John is kneeling right by his son, rubbing his chest in soothing circles.

 

The sheriff sighs in relief and offers a paper bag to go over Stiles’ mouth once his son’s eyes blink open. Stiles is still breathing all too quick and inefficient, all panicked and unhelpful gasps which don’t get enough air into his body. The bag is crumpled after having been in John’s back-pocket for days, waiting for the inevitable. His eyes meet Stiles’ brown one’s, a hand gripping the wrist rubbing at Stiles’ chest as his son breathes and breathes and breathes. John is still worried, he’d been expecting that a panic attack would come sooner or later after Stiles had told him that he was pregnant. But this had been worse than anything John had been expecting. He had been sure one would come after the lamia’s attack and the nightmares, yet he’d not thought it would be like this. This was as bad as the ones Stiles used to get after... Claudia died.

 

“You’re okay son, I’m right here,” John murmurs soothingly, his other hand moving to massage at Stiles scalp where his son had almost hit it on the floor when he’d begun to lilt where he sat and fallen over. John had been there to catch him half-way, thankfully. “I’m not going anywhere. Just breathe…” It takes a while but soon Stiles’ breaths fall in time with John’s own slow and careful breaths. The sheriff doesn’t really wonder about that, because his son has seemed to be on the verge of a major panic attack for the last week ever since the hospital. “You’re okay.”

 

The paper bag rustles between them as Stiles’ breathing normalizes. John keeps eye contact with him throughout, wishing he could somehow do more, be more, help his son with this new and frightening part of his life neither of them had seen coming.

 

Once he had been taken into the fold of knowing about  most  things supernatural  (no-one had been able to verify the existence of vampires for John, who had a fondness of 19th century vampire literature,  which had been a bit disappointing,  though maybe in retrospect a good thing ) , John had had to adjust his concept of what passed for normal. Yet even that had not fully prepared him to being told, by his teenaged son, that he was becoming a grandparent and that his  _ son  _ was the one pregnant. But he had, his heart always open for family, accepted the new state of things and had vowed to himself to offer Stiles all the support he could give him. 

 

John hadn’t really agreed fully with Stiles over not telling Derek, and it was crazy that the other parent was someone he had personally arrested one time or other, but he had not pushed the issue, hoping Stiles would tell in his own time. Even when it was clear how much Stiles missed Derek, how much being away from him hurt him. Especially with the way his life has been turned upside down. Now the sheriff began to think that maybe not pushing Stiles to contact Derek had not been such a good idea after all. Because he clearly wasn’t able to offer Stiles enough of the kind of support his kid needed, especially with the aftereffect of the sacrifice his son and two friends had made just  a few months previous. Stiles needed Derek to be there, whether he liked it or not. 

 

John wished he had Derek’s number so he could call him and tell him to hightail it back to Beacon Hills and take responsibility for his actions, namely getting John’s  son pregnant.  He was a bit surprised and disappointed that Scott, who he knew must have Derek's number, had not called Derek. But that most likely had to do with some or other  “bro-code” promise between Stiles and Scott. Next time John saw Scott he was shaking the number out of him, though, Alpha or no Alpha.  (He had not really spared a thought for his own position in what Stiles referred to as the McCall pack. Melissa was in it, though, being Scott's mother, so maybe being a part of it might not be a bad thing.  John just hoped that the boy would not stand in the way of his mother's happiness. )

 

John decided that he needed to have a talk with Deaton – who apparently was the resident magic expert in Beacon Hills – about how a great distance between a pair of same-sex parents who had conceived a magical baby regardless of the pregnant person being male, would affect the pregnant party. The sheriff was sure that it didn’t have a good effect on them. He might not have been privy to his son dating Derek Hale, but he had seen the effect it had had on Stiles when they had broken up. Magic had been involved, the whole business with the Darach which had almost left the sheriff himself dead and his son and friends making a sacrifice which had left a darkness around their hearts, and there had been one last night of unprotected sex between his son and the Hale boy. And now Stiles was bearing the brunt of the aftermath. (If Derek's past had not been Derek's past John would have blamed him most of all, but the boy had been through a lot, had been broken so that he could not be held entirely responsible for things. Also, Stiles had known full well about the in's and out's of using protection. Although John could not blame his son for not thinking about unprotected sex with a man possibly resulting in a pregnancy.)

 

The sheriff sighed long and deep.

 

He looked down at his son, meeting golden brown eyes looking up at him, scared and haunted, felt the hand around his wrist hold on bruising-tight. His son, alone, targeted by an ancient monster intent on eating him alive because of being pregnant via magic despite being male, scared senseless and over-tired on account of the nightmares he'd been suffering of for over a week now. No wonder something in him had snapped. The sheriff really couldn’t fault his son for wanting to find a way out, especially with the lamia on his tail. Yet that struck him as odd, especially after the way Stiles had looked and sounded like when he’d told his dad about being pregnant after they’d found out. He had sounded hopeful, determined, even if a little scared; now he’d just been confused and scared. And what he’d said just before the panic attack hitting, about having thoughts not feeling like his own, John didn’t like that one bit.

 

“You're not alone, son,” he tells his son “you have me. You'll _always_ have me.”

 

The paper bag fills and empties as Stiles takes in even, normal breaths. In the end, he nods and John takes away the bag. Stiles lunges up and wraps his hands around him, holding on tight, a little boy lost on the unexpected turn his road to adulthood has taken. Still John’s one and only son, who he’s sworn to protect from the evils of the world, as much as he can. Which isn’t as much these days than what it used to be, but has to be enough. At least Stiles has his pack.

 

“I know dad,” Stiles says, his voice cracking, words muffled by John’s shirt “still can't wrap my head around the fact that you're so okay with this, though.”

 

John notices Stiles averting the subject of abortion and the thoughts Stiles had said didn’t seem his own. He decides to leave it be for the time being, to avert another possible panic attack. He definitely needs to talk to Deaton.  M aybe Scott. Definitely Melissa. Because there is evasion and then there’s  _ evasion _ . This falls to the latter category. But he won’t push, can’t push. He also needs to talk to Derek. Maybe he can put up a warrant for him? Though only as a last resort.  After he's gotten Scott to give him his number. (He' d look into Stiles' phone but suspects he may not have Derek's number saved anymore, after how things went between them. And it would be a too big breach of his son's privacy, even when the intended result would technically justify the means.)

 

So he just chuckles in the Stiles-appropriate response, matching Stiles’ amazed and carefully hopeful tone. “That makes two of us, kid,” John mumbles against his son’s neck. “But if I don't get used to the idea now, when will I ever?” The words aren’t a lie, even when his attitude is a bit forced-on. “You’re pregnant and that’s all there is to it. You’re becoming a father,” he says, hoping he isn’t pushing it. But it needs to be said. Because it’s not like it’s going to go away on its own.

 

* * *

 

Stiles burrows into his dad's side, sniffling a little. “I know,” he tells his dad, voice little above a whisper. “I’m just scared. It’s a big thing.” His head is whirling. He still has doubts but with his discussions with Deaton, with the way the man had looked at him, almost apologetic, when he'd told Stiles that there wasn't a chance for him to not be pregnant without a great threat to his life, it all seems even more real now. Feels stifling and he needs something to diffuse the tension. He knows he wants this child, Derek’s kid, but what that means for his immediate future is frightening.

 

A soothing hand rubs over his back in circles, like when he was little and was sick. “Everybody’s scared of becoming a parent for the first time. And I know your situation isn’t ideal or anything like what either of us thought you becoming a parent would be but we  _ can _ make it through this.”

 

Stiles can hear the conviction in his dad’s voice. Knows that he believes in what he’s saying. And it makes the darkness disperse a little, makes a chink in the cloud surrounding his heart, intent on suffocating him again, of pulling him under a wave of anxiety and fear. There had been a crack already, forming when he’d managed to tell his dad’s about his dark thoughts. His dad makes it bigger.

 

“Thanks, dad…” and he clings, nothing to it, he has to cling. Because his dad is the best dad in the history of dad’s. Confronted first with werewolves after his son’s been lying to him for forever, then with his son being both gay and pregnant despite being male… his dad deserves a fucking medal. He does. Stiles can’t wish for a better dad, and hopes he can be as awesome when he becomes one. He’s failing already, he knows he is, because what kind of good parent considers an abortion as an option for conveniences' sake, even when there’s life-threatening issues bound into the whole mess. Yet… the abortion wasn’t his first thought when he found out. He has to make his dad understand. “I don’t know what’s happening to me…” It’s a whisper, a whimper, a plea for his dad to just make it okay.

 

“It’s okay to be scared, especially with parenting,” dad tells him, “it just means you’re a good parent.”

 

“That doesn’t make sense,” Stiles mumbles soggily into his dad’s shoulder.

 

“It does, because you’re usually scared of messing up when you’re a parent. Bad parents don’t care about messing up.”

 

“When did you start to be so okay with this?” Stiles asks, voice cracking a little at the end.

 

“If not now, when did you think I’d start taking this seriously?” Dad asks. “I saw the pregnancy tests, the blood work results and that blip on the ultrasound screen. If I didn’t start taking this seriously now, when would I ever?”

 

“When I get fat?” Stiles offers, even when he’s not showing a lot, not yet. Humor seems to be among the things that he’s allowed to say, that the darkness will deign to let him say without him starting to veer straight into a panic-attack again. Also, he _has_ to try and diffuse the tension a little, by any way available to him. So, inappropriate humor it is.

 

“It's called showing,” his dad replies, “next big thing will feeling the baby move, though I think you’re months away from that, which also, gotta tell you, feels weird enough from the outside. Your mother actually shrieked when she felt you move for the first time.” There is fondness and an aching wistfulness in his dad's voice, steadfast assurance in the warm weight of his hand on Stiles' shoulder. The dampness against Stiles’ shoulder belies dad’s calm, the way his voice isn’t cracking is actually a facade.

 

It makes Stiles ache.

 

For if anything has come out of this freak pregnancy of Stiles', it's been that he and dad now talk about his mom a whole lot more than what they'd done in the years since her death. It's both good and bad. It's good that they can talk about her yet it makes Stiles ache for her and miss her so much because she  _ should _ be here for this. She should be here to be a part of this every step of the way into unexpected magical parenthood. Maybe then it wouldn't feel so weird. Even when Stiles is convinced that she would have made him call Derek and tell him to hightail his way back to Beacon Hills the day  Stiles found out  th a t  he was pregnant. Though Stiles suspects that he might not been able to tell even her all the details of his baby’s conception. Of telling her how something which happened that night is keeping his anger at Derek well-lit and being a part of the reason why he’s refusing to call Derek or let anyone else do so. Stiles is still surprised how Scott hadn’t called Derek after the lamia’s attack. That he knows of. Although Derek’s conspicuous absence from Beacon Hills so far is proof enough that Scott hasn’t called.

 

“I wish she was here for this,” Stiles softly whispers against the fabric of his dad's uniform shirt, settling in for a good cuddle. He tries his best to not think how he misses his and Derek's cuddles.

But he’s worn out, tired after nights on end filled with nightmares and the pregnancy taking its toll on his not-designed-for-pregnancy body.

 

His dad pats him on the shoulder gently again. “Me too kiddo, me too.”

 

They both sigh.

 

Stiles, despite himself, actually wishes that Derek was there,  _ right there, _ but can't say it out loud,  _ won't _ , not yet. He's not ready. What if, despite everything, Derek would look at him, scent him and be disgusted? Stiles knows that he just  _ can't _ face another rejection from him. Even when he has good reason to suspect disgust wouldn’t factor among Derek’s reactions to the baby. Because he’s read what knotting implies. Derek must have known what it implied, right? Maybe it would have been easier if he'd given in to his initial reaction to finding out and just called Derek when the pee was still painting the pregnancy test strips into pink plus-signs. Or when Melissa McCall had confirmed it beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Or when Deaton had.  But now, after over a month has passed, it's harder and harder to even think to call.

 

And Stiles  _ knows _ that he should because keeping this from Derek isn't fair, isn't right. Even when Stiles knows that Derek  _ probably _ didn't intentionally knock him up, even when Derek had  _ knotted  _ him, there is a small part of him that thinks so even after Deaton's long and wordy explanation. Because family is at Derek's core. Along with an intent to make Stiles' life as difficult and messed up as physically possible ever since the two of them met. Derek would  _ love  _ to know, would rush to Stiles the first minute he heard  _ your baby, Derek. Ours. Family.  _ Maybe. And it's that maybe, coupled with lingering heart-ache and the memory of Derek together with  _ her _ that have kept Stiles from calling. 

 

That and the tendrils of darkness whispering within him, making him want to not be pregnant, making him fantasize about slipping accidentally-on-purpose, falling over and ending all possibilities, cutting out a future including a baby made out of Stiles and Derek. Whispering that Stiles  _ deserves  _ all the heart-ache he gets.

 

“I don't think I've ever missed her as much as I do now,” is what Stiles finally gets out, scattering his dark thoughts, and he _does_ , even when _her_ could as easily be _him_ , and they both know it even when his dad doesn't say anything _._ Thankfully, his dad refrains from mentioning it for the time being, letting Stiles put off the inevitable, even if just for a while.

 

Because the longer Stiles doesn't tell Derek about the baby, the more it'll hurt when he finally does. And the longer they’re apart, the more sway Stiles’ inner darkness will have. The higher the possibility of Stiles doing something irrevocable will become.

 

And that, if the end result would be what the darkness would want, with their baby dead before it even had a chance, would kill Derek and Stiles knows it. Stiles cannot call Derek now, maybe not ever, because then he’d have to explain how he’d entertained the notion of ending it, killing what he and Derek made together. He’s too broken to face Derek and just needs more time. More time to figure how to rid himself of the nightmares and any and all doubts. Needs to start forgiving Derek for something the man had no control over, needs to stop blaming for Derek becoming a victim, yet again, of becoming used by someone, even when Stiles had gotten hurt by it too.

 

Stiles knows, as he lets his dad’s hug calm him down even more, that he might not have much time. That it would be better if Derek were here in Beacon Hills, helping them fight the lamia. Helping to fight Stiles’ inner demons.

 

Maybe he’ll call him before the week is out or if the lamia attacks again. But right now, he just hugs his dad and is grateful for having him in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter triggers: discussion over abortion (medical, non-medical &magical), disturbing semi-graphic nightmares on the subject of self-abortion, some mental instability. Thoughts of self-harm due to the darkness the Nnemeton left Stiles with. Brief non-graphic references to knotting. Somewhat graphic lamia-attack. Panic attacks.
> 
> Overall, this chapter centers around the idea of abortion. Stiles thinks about and talks about it with a variety of people. Stiles has nightmares about having claws and digging them into himself.


End file.
